Ulrich  Middeldorf 


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THE  SPORT  of 
COLLECTING 


Photo  bY  F    W.  Stuin 

ST.  JOHN 
Wooden  figure,  14th  century 
(See  p.  130) 

Frontispiece 


THE  SPORT  of 
COLLECTING 

SIR  MARTIN  CONWAY 

Late  Slade  Professor  of  Fine  Art 
in   the   Uniwrsity   oj  Cambridge 


NEW  YORK 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


First  published  in  i 


[All  rights  reser'ued] 


IHEGOTYCOtM 
LIBRARY 


2)el)icatton* 


To  Dr.  Wilhelm  von  Bode, 

General  Director  of  the 

Berlin  Museums. 

Dear  Dr.  von  Bode, 

Over  thirty -five  years  ago  a  callow 
art-student  went  to  Berlin  in  quest  of 
woodcuts  in  Dutch  printed  books  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  Your  kindness  to  him 
began  in  those  happy  days,  and  has 
continued  unbroken  ever  since.  To 
catalogue  your  benefits  would  be  a  long 
tale.  The  last  of  them  came  only  the 
other  day,  when  you  were  good  enough 
to  read  and  give  your  blessing  to  this 
little  book,  which,  with  your  permission, 
that  same  student  now  takes  great 
pleasure  in  dedicating  to  you. 

MARTIN  CONWAY. 


CONTENTS 


^  Page 

Chapter  I.    A  False  Start   7 

„     11.  The  Hunt  in  Milan      -      -      -      -  i6 

„    III.  The  Finding  of  a  Foppa       -      -      -  26 

„    IV.    More  Finds  in  Milan   38 

,,     V.  Here  and  There  in  Italy     -      -      -  48 

„    VI.  The  Hunt  in  Egypt       -      -      -      -  61 

„  VII.  From  India  to  Peru      -      -      -      -  83 

„VIII.  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities      -      -  97 

„    IX.  A  Find  of  Giorgiones     -       -       -       -  107 

„     X.    Furniture   121 

„   XI.  How  We  Found  a  Castle      -      -      -  133 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


St.  John  :  Wooden  figure,  14th  century  -       -  Frontispiece 

Bevilacqua   facing  p.  22 

Neri  di  Bicci   „  /.  24 

FopPA   »  36 

Lotto   A  3^ 

ROMANINO   „  /.  44 

MORETTO   „  46 

TiEPOLO  -  „  48 

Bramantino   »  54 

SOLARIO   J)  /•  57 

Painter  unrecognised        -       -       -       -       -  j>/»59 

Gilt  Bronze  Cat  (from  Beni  Hasan)     -       -  /•  75 

Tanagra  and  Asia  Minor  Terra-cottas  -  „  /.  78 
Various   Egyptian,  Peruvian,  and  other 

Objects  -       -  »  /•  7^ 

Gandhara  Sculpture   „  86 

A  Gilt  Buddha    -      -      -      :      .      -  „  88 

Antique  Bust      -  »  /•  98 

Porphyry  Bust    -       -       -       -       -       -  „  100 

GiORGiONE   >,  /•  109 

Dilrer  Drawing  0/  i^g^  (alcove).    Detail  of 

Painting  by  Giorgione  (below)       -       -       -  „  no 

GiORGiONE     '       -       -       -       .       -  „  112 

School  OF  Tintoretto   „  118 

Ysenbrandt  -      -      -      -      -      -      -  „  120 

Allington  Castle  in  1909,  from  the  East  -  »  133 

Allington  Castle:  Gatehouse  -      -      -  »  13^ 

Allington  Castle:  Outer  Courtyard      -  „  138 


THE  SPORT  OF  COLLECTING 


HE  passion  for  "  collecting "  must  correspond  with 


X  some  deep-seated  instinct  in  man.  Children  of 
tender  age  often  fall  under  its  sway,  and  it  is  the 
last  passion  that  still  masters  the  very  old.  I  once  knew 
an  aged  collector  who  was  suffering  all  the  ills  that  nature 
accumulates  on  the  last  years  of  some  nonagenarians.  His 
sight  was  feeble ;  he  was  deaf ;  he  was  often  racked  with 
pain.  It  seemed  evident  that  his  end  was  at  hand.  His 
days  and  nights  had  to  be  spent  in  an  armchair,  and  each 
gasping  breath  seemed  likely  to  be  his  last.  To  him 
entered  a  dealer  of  his  acquaintance  with  a  splendid  K'ang 
Hsi  Famille  verte  vase,  which  the  old  man  had  long 
wished  to  possess.  The  sight  of  it  revived  his  forces ;  his 
breathing  cleared ;  he  sat  erect  in  his  chair,  and  presently, 
in  the  excitement  of  bargaining,  was  upon  his  feet 
striding  about  the  room.  The  struggle  and  the  victory 
revived  him,  and  he  lived  on  for  several  years  before  death 
finally  won  him,  and  the  British  Museum  entered  upon  its 
inheritance. 

Naked  and  owning  nothing,  we  enter  into  the  world, 
and  the  fewer  material  things  we  have  to  house  and  guard 


CHAPTER  I. 


A   FALSE  START 


8 


A  FALSE  START 


the  freer  we  remain ;  yet  upon  most  of  us  a  necessity  seems 
to  be  laid,  not  merely  to  acquire  that  kind  of  wealth  which 
is  strength,  but  to  obtain  possession  of  objects,  not  always 
beautiful,  by  which  our  lives  thenceforward  are  con- 
ditioned, and  our  goings  out  and  comings  in  suffer  a  daily 
fettered  freedom. 

As  a  child,  I  passed  through  the  stages  of  collecting 
stamps,  butterflies,  and  fossils  in  a  more  than  usually 
vague  and  unscientific  manner ;  and  it  was  not  till  after  I 
had  been  pursuing  the  study  of  art-history  many  years 
that  I  yielded  to  the  spell  and  became  a  collector  of  works 
of  art.  I  can  even  fix  the  date  when  I  caught  the  infec- 
tion. It  was  in  the  early  part  of  the  month  of  May, 
1887.  I  was  spending  two  or  three  months  in  Milan.  The 
famous  Giovanni  Morelli,  the  great  connoisseur  of  Italian 
Art,  was  then  living,  and  mine  was  the  good  fortune  to 
be  brought  much  in  contact  with  him  and  with  his  scarcely 
less  distinguished  friend  and  follower.  Dr.  Gustavo 
Frizzoni. 

Morelli  was  no  mere  dry-as-dust  student,  but  a  fully 
equipped  man  of  the  world,  active  in  politics,  socially 
gifted,  and  with  a  force  of  character  that  could  not  but 
impress  itself  upon  a  youthful  admirer.  One  day,  when  I 
was  in  his  apartment  and  he  was  discoursing  upon  paint- 
ing, and  illustrating  his  remarks  by  reference  to  his  own 
collection  of  pictures,  now  the  property  of  the  city  of 
Bergamo,  he  suddenly  broke  off  to  say:  "The  only  way 
really  to  get  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  old  painters  is 
to  collect  pictures.    You  ought  to  begin  at  once." 

"  Collect  pictures,"  I  said ;  "  that's  very  easy  to  recom- 
mend ;  but  how  am  I  going  to  pay  for  them  ?  " 

"That's  not  difiicult,"  he  replied ;   " they  are  cheap 


MORELLrS  BET 


9 


enough,  if  you  know  how  to  look  for  them  and  where 
to  find  them.  It's  not  so  much  money  as  an  educated  eye 
that  a  collector  needs.  If  you  were  to  find  a  previously 
unknown  Raphael,  the  chances  are  you  could  buy  it  for  a 
hundred  francs.  Anyhow,  you  must  begin  collecting  at 
once." 

"  And,  please,  where  and  how  am  I  to  begin  ? "  I  asked. 

"  Well,"  he  answered,  "  I  will  tell  you  how  to  begin. 
You  have  been  studying  the  Milanese  School  very  closely 
during  the  last  few  weeks,  and  by  now  you  know  the 
paintings  and  style  of  most  of  the  artists.  There  is 
Vincenzo  Foppa,  for  instance.  Very  few  pictures  by  him 
are  known,  and  yet  he  must  have  painted  plenty,  and 
probably  several  exist  which  have  not  yet  been  identified. 
Begin  by  going  to  all  the  small  dealers'  shops  in  Milan, 
and  see  if  you  can't  find  a  forgotten  Foppa  in  some  dark 
corner;  and,  by  way  of  stimulus,  I  will  now  bet  you 
twenty  francs  that  you  don't  find  one,  though  I  think  it 
quite  possible  that  you  may." 

We  went  away  from  Morelli's  that  afternoon,  my  wife 
and  I,  with  our  heads  full  of  Foppa  and  the  determina- 
tion to  win  that  twenty  francs.  The  very  next  day  I 
began  that  pilgrimage  amongst  the  dealers'  shops,  which, 
except  when  I  have  been  exploring  mountains,  has  con- 
tinued till  the  present  time.  We  bent  our  steps  at  once  to 
a  cafe  and  asked  for  the  local  directory.  It  provided  us 
with  a  Hst  of  dealers,  and  I  remember  that  there  were 
some  fifty  or  more  of  them  scattered  over  all  parts  of  the 
city.  Milan  in  those  days  was  very  different  from  Milan 
to-day,  not  merely  in  all  the  large  and  obvious  differences, 
but  quite  as  markedly  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  col- 
lector.  Then  the  passionate  hunt  for  old  works  of  art  was 


lO 


A  FALSE  START 


only  beginning.  In  Florence  and  Venice  it  had  well 
begun,  but  it  had  scarcely  extended  to  Milan,  still  less  to 
the  smaller  cities.  The  number  of  little  dealers  was 
legion,  because  there  was  an  abounding  material  for  their 
trading.  They  were  all  loaded  up  with  goods.  The  pave- 
ments in  front  of  the  shops,  the  shops  themselves,  the  back 
premises,  their  own  sitting  and  bedrooms,  and  all  manner 
of  neighbouring  lofts,  stables,  and  warehouses,  were 
crammed  with  old  stuff  of  many  sorts,  which  was  patiently 
awaiting  buyers.  In  all  this  accumulation,  of  course,  good 
things  were  astray  amongst  bad.  If  a  man  had  an  eye  to 
distinguish,  it  was  a  mere  question  of  labour  before 
search  was  rewarded. 

So  I  took  the  Milanese  dealers  in  order,  and  religiously 
visited  them  all  in  rotation,  and  examined  each  one's  stock 
completely  before  I  went  on  to  the  next.  It  was  a  work 
of  many  long  and  tiring  days.  I  think  it  was  in  the  first 
of  the  smaller  dealers  I  went  to  that  we  made  our  first 
purchase.  It  was  a  Venetian  Virgin  and  Child  with 
saints — one  of  those  small  altar-pieces,  wider  than  they 
are  tall,  with  a  series  of  half-length  figures  about  life-size. 
If  I  live  to  be  a  hundred,  I  shall  not  forget  the  enthusiasm 
of  that  purchase.  It  was,  I  believe,  the  first  time  I  had 
seen  a  real  "  Old  Master  "  out  of  a  picture  gallery  or  some 
famous  private  collection.  Such  objects  had  seemed 
inaccessible  treasures  of  priceless  value.  And  here  was 
one  that  could  be  ours  for  a  mere  ten  pounds.  It  was 
clearly  a  genuine  old  picture,  certainly  Venetian,  not  by 
me  assignable  to  any  special  artist,  but  with  the  great 
Giovanni  Bellini  shining,  if  somewhat  dimly,  through. 
And  then  it  had  obviously  been  all  painted  over.  Who 
could  say,  but  that   underneath  that  later  painting  a 


A  FIRST  PURCHASE 


n 


genuine  Bellini  might  not  lie  hid  ?  Without  hesitation,  we 
paid  our  money,  hired  a  cab,  and  carried  the  treasure  off 
at  once  to  our  apartment. 

It  was  a  glorious  home-coming!  and  adds  lustre  even 
now  to  the  memory  of  that  agreeable  abiding-place.  It 
stood  in  a  remote  corner  of  Milan,  in  the  Porta  Venezia 
direction,  where  was  then  much  open  land,  with  spacious 
gardens  surrounding  comfortable  houses.  Ours  belonged 
to  a  peculiar  Baronessa,  a  great  dancer  in  her  time,  almost 
contemporary  with  Taglioni,  but  fallen  upon  less  fortunate 
days,  and  compelled  to  let  off  part  of  her  house.  Besides 
our  rooms,  we  had  a  large  terrace  stretching  out  beyond 
them  and  looking  down  upon  the  garden  on  two  sides,  and 
over  a  wall  into  a  quiet  lane  on  the  third.  Here,  in  fine 
weather,  we  used  to  dine,  and  such  was  our  infatuation 
with  the  wonderful  picture  that  we  carried  it  out  to  the 
terrace  for  dinner  and  back  to  the  salon  when  we  went 
in.  I  rather  think  it  was  propped  up  in  my  bedroom  at 
night.  I  could  not  bear  to  be  separated  from  it  for  a 
moment.  We  were  always  finding  new  beauties  in  it — its 
splendid  colour,  its  wonderful  blues  and  reds.  No  Titian 
had  ever  seemed  to  us  more  rich.  Such  is  the  glorifying 
effect  of  ownership! 

A  second-rate  picture  that  is  one's  own  is  finer  than 
all  the  great  galleries  of  the  world  that  are  public 
property.  It  is  easy  to  tell  us  that  we,  you  and  I,  share 
the  ownership  of  the  National  Gallery;  but  that  is  mere 
talk.  To  own  a  picture  is  to  be  able  to  do  what  you  please 
with  it:  to  hang  it  where  you  please,  to  change  it  about, 
to  look  at  the  back  of  it,  to  show  it  to  your  friends,  and 
to  shut  it  up  from  people  you  don't  like.  A  picture  in  a 
gallery  belongs  in  any  effectual  fashion  only  to  the  director 


12 


A  FALSE  START 


of  the  gallery  for  the  time  being.  He  has  the  fun  of  it,  and 
no  one  else.  He  can  have  it  lifted  about,  the  glass  taken 
off  it,  the  back  turned  round,  the  'frame  removed.  No  other 
kind  of  ownership  is  worth  a  rap.  Whether  a  picture  is 
in  the  Louvre  or  the  Uffizi  or  the  National  Gallery  is  all 
one  to  a  visitor;  it  is  only  by  conscious  pretence  that  he 
can  make  himself  imagine  a  kind  of  proprietorship  in  one 
more  than  in  the  others.  In  a  gallery,  you  are  looked 
after  by  a  guardian ;  you  are  kept  away  from  close  vision 
by  a  horrid  bar.  You  can't  sit  where  you  please  and  smoke 
in  comfort,  while  you  enjoy  for  hours  together  the  object 
of  your  delight.  To  own  a  single  work  of  art  is  pleasure 
of  an  altogether  different  kind  from  looking  at  objects  in 
a  museum  or  public  gallery.  Hence  the  extraordinary 
blindness  of  owners  to  the  real  merits  of  their  possessions. 
"A  poor  thing,  but  mine  own,"  looks  to  its  possessor  so 
much  finer  than  a  far  better  thing  belongmg  to  someone 
else  or  to  the  public.  It  is  difficult  for  an  owner  to  imagine 
how  little  merit  someone  else  may  be  able  to  find  in  what, 
to  him,  is  so  keen  a  source  of  delight.  The  glamour  of 
possession  is  a  reality.  It  enforces  all  beauties;  it  clouds 
over  defects.  There  is  nothing  like  it  for  awakening 
sensibility  to  what  an  artist  intended  to  convey.  It  is  at 
once  stimulus  and  anaesthetic.  It  helps  the  eye  to  see 
what  is  there  of  beauty;  it  blinds  the  eye  to  faults  and 
failures  that  would  otherwise  be  glaringly  apparent. 

Such  was  our  first  experience  of  the  effect  of  possession. 
We  thought  our  poor  picture  was  the  finest  thing  on  earth, 
— for  the  first  day  or  two.  It  was  better  to  sit  at  home 
and  gaze  at  it  than  to  spend  our  time  before  the  master- 
pieces in  the  Brera.  But  presently  the  effect  began  to 
wear  off.    The  over-painting  became  unpleasantly  promi- 


THE  JOY  OF  POSSESSION  13 


nent.  We  attributed  to  it  all  the  faults  of  drawing  and 
modelling,  of  which  we  began  to  be  only  too  conscious. 
As  the  hours  went  by  we  became  more  sensible  to  these 
drops  of  bitter  in  our  cup  of  sweetness.  At  last  the 
suggestion  was  made  that  we  should  clean  off  the  repaints 
from  one  little  corner  and  see  what  the  real  picture  under- 
neath was  like.  I  ran  out  for  some  turpentine  and  spirits 
of  wine,  and,  with  a  bit  of  cotton-wool  in  each  hand, 
saturated  with  the  one  and  the  other,  I  made  tentative 
dabs  at  the  extremity  of  the  Child's  foot  down  at  the  bottom 
of  the  panel.  A  beautifully  drawn  toe  emerged  from 
under  the  later  smearing  of  paint,  then  another,  finally  the 
whole  foot.  It  was  damaged;  but  the  whole  was  pro- 
mising. The  toes  were  excellently  drawn.  Our  latent 
enthusiasm  burst  forth  once  more.  We  magnified  the  merit 
of  what  we  had  revealed,  and  imagination  spread  the  like 
over  the  whole  picture.  We  assigned  every  fault  to  the 
restorer,  and  every  merit  to  the  beclouded  artist.  The 
foot  was  like  a  certain  foot  by  Cima ;  perhaps  the  picture 
was  by  him  after  all,  and  some  horrid  botcher  had  brought 
it  to  the  pass  from  which  we  would  now  rescue  it.  Our 
decision  was  soon  made.  We  would  strip  off  the  whole 
of  the  repaints  and  see  our  picture,  for  better  or  worse,  as 
it  actually  was. 

In  a  few  minutes  the  deed  was  done.  What  a  horrible 
experience!  One  more  frightful  detail  after  another 
emerged  from  beneath  the  kindly  veil  of  modern  paint. 
The  only  tolerably  good  feature  was  the  little  foot  we  had 
first  revealed.  The  backs  came  off  the  heads.  Wretchedly 
drawn  ears  appeared  in  strangely  false  positions  on  ill- 
shapen  skulls.  Unpaired  eyes  looked  this  way  and  that. 
Large  patches  of  bare  panel  occurred,  where  all  the  old 


14 


A  FALSE  START 


paint  had  fallen  or  been  bruised  away.  In  one  comer  was 
the  brown  mark  of  a  burn,  where  apparently  a  hot  poker 
had  been  in  contact  with  the  picture.  It  was,  indeed,  a 
frightful  daub.  Our  house  of  cards  fell  to  the  ground  with 
a  crash,  and  we  sat  silent  and  disgusted  amid  the  ruins. 

Thus  it  was  that  we  bought,  and  very  cheaply,  an  invalu- 
able experience.  We  learnt  what  restorers  can  do.  We 
realised  that,  in  the  great  days,  there  had  been  bad  painters 
as  well  as  good,  and  that  all  Old  Masters  are  not  fine  merely 
because  they  are  old.  We  learnt  that  appearances  may  be 
very  deceptive,  and  we  plumbed  with  startling  suddenness 
the  immense  depth  of  our  also  wide  ignorance.  A  few 
days  later  a  very  differently  laden  cab  carried  us  and  our 
picture  back  to  that  little  dealer's  shop.  There  was  no 
enthusiasm  on  board  that  journey,  no  glorious  pride  of 
possession.  We  hid  the  thing  from  the  public  gaze,  and 
smuggled  it  across  the  pavement  as  quickly  and  unobtru- 
sively as  possible.  The  dealer  was  quite  hospitable  to  the 
idea  of  taking  it  back.  He  could  easily  have  it  restored 
once  more,  and  would  allow  us  credit  for  what  we  had 
paid,  less  the  ridiculously  small  sum  we  now  learnt  would 
suffice  to  pay  for  bringing  the  poor  picture  back  to  the 
condition  in  which  we  had  acquired  it.  I  wonder  where 
that  picture  is  now,  and  what  it  looks  like  ?  It  can  scarcely 
again  have  given  to  anyone  even  the  brief  delirium  of  joy 
we  had  from  it;  nor,  perhaps,  was  there  anyone  both  so 
green  and  so  adventurous  likely  to  come  around  and  receive 
from  it  the  priceless  and  enduring  lesson  which  it  yielded 
to  us. 

I  am  not  going  to  pretend  that  this  was  the  last  time  I 
have  been  taken  in  by  forged  or  cleverly  "  restored " 
works  of  art.    Forgers  and  semi-forgers  are  an  inventive 


EXPERIENCE  BOUGHT 


15 


tribe.  As  connoisseurship  advances,  so  does  their  skill 
and  initiative.  Each  new  field  of  collecting  opens  up  a 
new  area  for  the  forger's  activities.  The  omnivorous 
collector  must  often  buy  his  experience  as  he  ventures  into 
a  fresh  category  of  antiquities.  But  if  we  were  once  and 
again  in  future  years  to  be  victimised  by  specious 
"  treasures,"  we  never  had  so  dramatic  an  emergence  from 
so  joyous  a  cloud  of  dreams,  nor  did  we  ever  again  make  so 
headlong  a  plunge  into  wild  and  extravagant  imaginings. 
Unfortunately,  as  the  years  pass,  so  passes  the  power  of 
ecstasy.  No  moonlight  any  more  is  like  the  moonlight  on 
the  waters  of  our  youth.  No  mountain  panorama  in  all  the 
splendour  of  clearest  mid-day  can  be  like  the  first  views 
from  mountain  summits  that  greeted  our  wondering  eyes, 
when,  all  glorious  with  a  difficult  ascent  safely  accomplished, 
iwe  gazed  forth  in  the  passion  of  youth  on  a  world  actually 
fairer  than  any  old  prophet's  vision  of  an  imagined 
paradise. 


CHAPTER  IL 


THE    HUNT   IN  MILAN 

THE  incident  of  the  Venetian  picture  was  but  byplay 
in  our  real  quest,  which  was,  to  search  for  and  find  a 
Foppa.  Those  twenty  francs  of  Morelli*s  had  simply 
got  to  be  won.  So  after  the  loss  of  less  time  than  my 
narrative  may  perhaps  suggest,  I  settled  down  seriously 
to  pursue  a  steady  and  relentless  search.  Memory,  as  I 
try  to  recall  those  far-off  days,  brings  before  my  mind's 
eye  a  confused  vision  of  dirty  antichita  shops,  dark,  deep- 
laden  in  dust,  malodorous.  Usually  there  were  a  number 
of  pieces  of  furniture  in  the  style  of  Giovanni  Batista 
Maggiolino,  with  which  the  houses  of  Milan  seem  to  have 
been  filled.  They  were,  for  the  most  part,  inlaid  chests-of- 
drawers  and  other  pieces  of  bedroom  furniture,  and  whole 
suites  of  them  were  to  be  had  for  little  more  than  their 
price  as  old  timber.  They  used  to  be  heaped  up  on  the 
pavements,  and  piled  high  in  garrets  and  lofts.  Everyone 
was  selling  them,  and  few  desired  to  buy.  Yet  they  were 
really  very  admirable  work,  beautifully  inlaid,  a  kind  of 
Italian  Sheraton,  and  nowadays  they  command  a  good 
price,  and  are  not  easy  to  obtain.  In  an  afternoon,  I  could 
have  bought  enough  to  panel  a  great  room.  I  wonder 
where  they  have  all  gone  to  now. 


LOST  CHANCES 


17 


In  such  places  I  sought  long  and  carefully,  finding  and 
passing  by  many  a  good  picture,  either  too  costly  for  our 
notions  of  what  was  a  reasonable  price  in  those  days,  or 
of  some  school  or  period  which  I  did  not  understand.  How 
often  in  these  later  days  have  I  regretted  the  economies  of 
that  time.  Why  did  we  not  empty  out  our  purses  to  the 
dregs?  Why  were  we  so  foohsh  as  not  to  plunge  deeply 
into  debt  rather  than,  for  instance,  allow  a  genuine  Gentile 
Bellini  to  slip  through  our  fingers,  when  we  might  have 
captured  it  for  a  mere  eighty  pounds  ?  I  might  have  had  a 
now  well-known  Giotto  for  seventy  pounds.  Alas  for  the 
foolish  economies  and  abnegations  of  an  imprudently  pru- 
dent youth! 

Each  day  I  went  to  look  at  one  or  other  of  the  known 
Foppas,  to  impress  its  style  ever  more  and  more  distinctly 
on  my  memory ;  then  off  to  the  slums  again  to  pursue  the 
apparently  endless  quest.  Of  course,  I  encountered  and 
recognised  a  certain  number  of  forgeries,  and,  no  doubt, 
failed  to  identify  many  more ;  but  the  surprising  thing  was 
the  extraordinary  number  of  genuine,  but  utterly  bad,  old 
pictures  that  had  been  swept  together  by  dealers.  The 
galleries  of  Europe  contain  on  their  walls  many  bad  old 
pictures ;  their  magazines  are  filled  with  a  much  larger 
quantity  of  worse;  but  it  was  a  revelation  to  me  then  tio 
discover  that  there  still  existed  in  the  dark  backgrounds 
of  the  dealers'  warehouses  an  almost  countless  multitude  of 
yet  viler  daubs,  which  had  maintained  a  dishonoured 
existence  throughout  some  four  centuries,  and  were  still 
hopeful  of  finding  purchasers.  I  suppose  they  were  painted 
by  minor  craftsmen  in  the  smaller  towns,  or  by  itinerant 
journeymen  going  from  place  to  place,  perhaps  for  some 
domestic  oratory  or  village  chapel  Who  can  say  that  they 
B 


i8 


THE  HUNT  IN  MILAN 


may  not  have  stimulated  as  fervent  devotions  in  simple 
hearts  as  were  ever  poured  forth  by  Pope  or  Cardinal  be- 
neath some  altar-piece  by  Raphael  or  Titian?  Be  that 
as  it  may,  the  search  through  these  wrecks  of  bad  or  in- 
different works  of  art  was  a  sorry  and  fatiguing  business. 
As  daylight  waned,  and  I  gladly  hied  me  back  home  from 
my  slummy  haunts,  it  was  often  with  a  sense  of  utter  weari- 
ness, disgust,  and  failure.  At  last  the  day  came  when  not 
only  all  the  recognised  art  dealers  of  Milan  had  been  visited, 
but  all  the  furniture-menders,  frame-makers,  and  gilders, 
and  every  discoverable  person  who  added  the  sale  of  old 
goods  to  any  other  trade,  had  been  visited  by  us,  some  of 
them  more  than  once.  We  had  not  found  the  desired 
Foppa,  though  we  had  by  no  means  drawn  an  absolute 
blank.  One  acquisition,  indeed,  we  had  made  which  came 
very  near  to  what  we  were  seeking,  but  before  telling  about 
that  I  ought,  perhaps,  to  say  something  about  who  Foppa 
was. 

I  hope  some  of  my  readers  may  never  have  heard  of  him, 
because  I  am  not  writing  this  little  book  for  my  colleagues, 
the  hard-shell  students  of  art-history,  but  just  for  the  enter- 
tainment of  nice  people  who  have  other  interests  in  life 
than  the  mere  question  who  painted  this  or  the  other 
more  or  less  obscure  picture.  Not  that  the  work  that  leads 
to  the  decision  of  such  apparently  unimportant  questions 
is  not  worth  while.  There  is  really  no  better  fun  than  to 
hunt  out  forgotten  facts  of  whatever  kind,  and  bring  order 
into  any  sort  of  neglected  chaos.  Fifty  years  ago,  pictures 
were  vaguely  attributed  to  painters  of  repute,  sometimes 
on  mere  grounds  of  tradition,  sometimes  because  a  name 
was  wanted  as  a  kind  of  handle  for  holding  on  to  some 
admired  work,  and  sometimes  as  the  mere  say-so  of  a  self- 


CONNOISSEURSHIP 


19 


appointed  "  authority."  When  the  real  love  of  old  works 
of  art  set  in  and  captured  the  fancy  of  a  great  many  people, 
and  when  facilities  of  travel  improved,  and  public  picture- 
galleries  began  to  grow,  and  loan  exhibitions  to  be  held,  of 
course  it  became  inevitable  that  all  these  attributions  should 
be  tested.  Lovers  of  art,  as  they  grew  familiar  with  the 
paintings  of  the  Old  Masters,  became  conscious  that  many 
a  "  Raphael "  was  not  painted  by  Raphael.  They  also  learnt 
tliat  many  a  picture  to  which  no  name  was  attached  was 
as  fine  as,  or  finer  than,  others  by  artists  of  well-rooted 
reputations.  Thus  the  hunt  began — the  hunt  after  for- 
gotten reputations,  and  for  the  purifying  of  the  record  of 
established  masters. 

In  consequence  of  the  persistent  labours  of  some  three 
generations  of  earnest  workers,  a  great  change  has  been 
wrought  Pictures  have  been  deprived  of  false  attributions 
which  once  masqueraded  as  the  work  of  greater  men.  Pic- 
tures have  been  raised  from  anonymity  into  the  rank  of 
acknowledged  masterpieces  by  famed  artists.  Finally,  for- 
gotten artists  of  the  first  rank  have  been  found  anew,  and 
equipped  with  a  longer  or  shorter  list  of  known  works 
now  acknowledged  to  have  been  painted  by  them.  Simul- 
taneously with  this  work  of  connoisseurship,  the  old  archives 
have  been  ransacked,  dates  have  been  discovered,  the  trust- 
worthy facts  about  artists'  lives  have  been  revealed,  and  all 
manner  of  interesting  information  clearly  set  down,  grouped 
together,  and  made  to  yield  precious  treasures  of  deduc- 
tion. This  work  has  called  into  existence  a  whole  class 
of  investigators — experts,  historians,  archivists,  and  the 
like — and  for  them  the  museums  and  universities  of 
Europe  and  America  have  provided  a  reward  of  bread 
and  butter  in  return  for  their  devotion  of  a  lifetime  to 


20  THE  HUNT  IN  MILAN 


research.  These  men,  however,  are  paid  not  so  much  in 
money  as  in  sport.  Theirs  is  the  joy  of  the  hunt.  They 
do  not  have  to  await  the  winter  for  their  quarry.  They 
are  hot  on  the  scent  all  the  year  round,  and  never  know  but 
that  to-morrow  may  give  them  some  new  fact  or  open  their 
eyes  to  some  unsuspected  generalisation  which  will  thrill 
them  with  the  delight  of  success  in  keener  form  than  ever 
big-game  hunters  experienced,  and  will  bring  them  also 
the  envy  and  admiration  of  their  rivals,  and,  rarely,  even 
the  momentary  attention  of  the  great  world. 

Based  on  all  this  activity  of  research,  the  whole  giant 
growth  of  art-dealing  has  arisen  with  its  huge  money  re- 
wards, and  out  of  the  same  impulse  has  come  that  vast 
enterprise  of  excavation — the  most  sporting  category  of 
all  historical  sports — which  has  carried  men  who  at  home 
are  fancied  to  be  dry-as-dust  antiquarians  to  places  remote 
and  sometimes  insecure,  where,  superintending  perhaps 
hundreds  of  labourers,  talking  unknown  tongues,  and  as 
lawless  as  the  miners  of  Damsite  Gulch,  they  have  delved 
into  the  piled  heaps  of  ancient  ruin  and  recovered  lost 
cities,  forgotten  civilisations,  nameless  races,  and  treasures 
of  glorious  beauty.  Yes,  indeed,  the  hunt  is  worth  while  in 
any  of  its  forms,  and  the  mere  fox-hunter,  in  what  he  be- 
lieves to  be  the  greatest  moment  of  his  glory,  does  not  begin 
to  know  the  passionate  thrill  of  delight,  almost  enough  to 
strike  a  man  dead,  which  comes,  it  may  be  in  the  still  hours 
of  the  night,  at  a  moment  of  discovery  to  some  silent  worker 
in  his  quiet  study. 

Whether  Foppa  was  quite,  or  only  almost,  forgotten 
before  the  days  of  research  I  myself  forget.  I  think  he 
was  a  name  and  little  more.  Presently,  he  began  to  emerge. 
Pictures  were  assigned  to  him  with  certainty  one  after 


VINCENZO  FOPPA 


21 


another,  and  now  he  is  the  subject  of  a  thick  and  large 
octavo  biography,  by  Miss  Constance  Jocelyn  Ffoulkes, 
fully  documented,  fully  illustrated,  and  accepted  as  authori- 
tative by  those  entitled  to  an  opinion.  To  that  book  let 
any  reader  desirous  of  accurate  detail  refer.  He  will  there 
find  dates  of  birth  and  other  events.  He  will  find  a  list  of 
his  pictures  and  photographs  of  them,  including  the  two 
that  will  be  referred  to  below.  He  will  find  whence  his  art 
was  derived,  and  how  he  lived  much  longer  than  used  to 
be  supposed,  and  how,  in  his  old  age,  he  failed  in  power, 
and  actually  painted  the  bad  pictures  which  kind  critics  had 
wanted  to  ascribe  to  someone  else.  For  us  here,  all  that 
we  need  to  note  is  that  from  him  and  his  contemporary, 
Mantegna,  the  great  Renaissance  schools  of  painting  in 
North  Italy  derived  their  origin.  Those  of  Venice  and  the 
East  go  back  to  Mantegna;  those  of  Milan,  Brescia,  and 
the  West  go  back  to  Foppa.  His  importance,  from  the 
historical  point  of  view,  is  thus  obvious.  Bevilacqua  and 
Borgognone  were  his  followers,  if  not  both  his  pupils. 
Luini,  amongst  other  well-known  artists  of  the  next 
generation,  descended  from  him.  Those  grey  faces  I  had 
by  now  so  well  learned  to  recognise  re-emerge  charac- 
teristically in  Luini.  Borgognone's  fascinating  angels  first 
appeared  on  Foppa's  panels.  Foppa's  compositions  were 
repeated  and  developed  long  after  he  had  ceased  to  paint 
for  Lombard  patrons. 

When,  therefore,  one  day,  whilst  hot  upon  the  Foppa 
scent,  we  stumbled  on  a  Bevilacqua,  we  felt  that  success 
might  not,  after  all,  elude  us.  It  came  about  in  this  way. 
There  was  an  old  man  who  sold  pictures  in  a  back  street 
in  rather  a  remote  quarter  of  the  city,  whose  shop  I  had 
visited  late  one  afternoon.  I  found  in  it  a  picture,  apparently 


THE  HUNT  IN  MILAN 


of  the  Leonardo  School,  a  version  of  the  "Madonna  del 
Lago,"  which  he  sent  home  after  me  on  approval.  Daylight 
revealed  it  as  a  modern  copy  done  on  an  old  panel,  so  I 
took  it  back  to  him.  He  was  disappointed,  and  well  he 
might  be,  to  see  it  returned  on  his  hands,  as  perhaps  it  had 
often  been  returned  before,  and  he  was  more  than  usually 
eager  that  I  should  see  every  picture  he  possessed,  in  hopes 
that  he  might  not  fail,  after  all,  to  sell  me  something.  He 
was  a  queer  little  old  fellow,  and  wore  a  black  velvet  cap, 
which  made  him  look  like  a  sorcerer  out  of  a  Rembrandt. 
He  took  us  through  his  various  living  rooms,  and  finally 
up  to  his  bedroom.  My  wife  entered  first,  and  at  once 
saw  and  recognised  the  Bevilacqua.  I  followed  and  did 
the  like,  but  we  said  nothing,  and  awaited  developments. 
^OT  anyone  who  knew  as  well  as  we  did  the  Brera 
Bevilacqua  there  could  be  no  doubt  about  this  one,  though 
people  with  a  general  knowledge  of  the  school  often  mis- 
take it  for  a  Borgognone.  Really  it  comes  much  closer 
to  Foppa  than  any  picture  Borgognone  ever  painted,  and 
the  angels  might  have  been  designed  by  him.  I  am  not 
going  to  tell  the  price  we  paid  for  it,  nor  shall  I  hereafter 
reveal  our  prices  generally.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  they  were 
moderate  for  those  days,  and,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
to-day,  absurdly  small.  We,  however,  thought  them  quite 
large  enough,  and  no  doubt  they  gave  the  vendors  a  suffi- 
cient profit.  Thus  we  carried  off  our  first  substantial  pur- 
chase, and  if  our  home-coming  that  day  lacked  the  wild 
enthusiasm  with  which  we  had  convoyed  the  Venetian  daub, 
hke  the  Florentines  their  Rucellai  Madonna,  we,  at  aU 
events,  enjoyed  a  sohd  delight  in  that  we  knew  what  we 
had  got  without  the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  knew  it  to  be  a 
sound  painting  by  a  definite,  if  not  absolutely  first-rate 


BE  VILACQU  A 

33i  X  24  in. 


Facing  p.  22 


BEVILACQUA 


23 


master,  and  were  thus  secure  against  any  unforeseen  and 
violent  reaction  or  disappointment.* 

That  same  day,  too,  I  obtained  access  to  the  apartment 
of  a  dealer  who  was  known  as  the  Widow  Arrigoni.  She 
kept  her  things  in  two  or  three  lofty  salons.  For  the  most 
part,  they  were  large  things,  giving  to  the  rooms  somewhat 
of  the  imposing  aspect  which  every  dealer  in  Italy  nowadays 
knows  how  to  achieve.  Great  gilt  pieces  of  furniture  and 
other  rococo  objects  curled  and  twisted  and  glimmered 
among  dark  hangings,  and  there  were  several  large  and, 
to  my  thinking,  ugly  late  works,  which  then  had  no  interest 
for  me.  She  owned  also  quantities  of  splendid  old  stuffs, 
and  a  great  deal  of  china.  Much  of  all  this  was  of  fine 
quality,  but  not  in  our  line.  I  was  about  to  go  away  when 
she  said : — 

"  I  know  what  you  want — a  Raphael.  I  have  one,  and 
will  now  show  it  to  you."  Alas,  how  many  "  Raphaels " 
had  I  even  then  already  been  shown ;  and  how  many  more 
was  I  afterward  destined  to  behold!  Dealers  nowadays, 
even  the  most  ignorant,  know  too  much  to  play  thus  with 
the  great  names ;  but  the  habit  of  the  eighteenth  century 
still  lingered  on  when  I  began  to  collect,  and  Raphaels, 
Michelangelos,  Titians,  and  Leonardos  were  frequently 
among  the  pretensions  of  the  smallest  dealers.  Accordingly, 
my  heart  did  not  flutter  when  the  Raphael  was  produced, 
even  though  it  was  framed  in  what  is,  or  then  was,  known 
as  a  "robbery"  box.     A  robbery  is  a  well-made  cabinet 

*  This  Bevilacqua  Madonna  was  exhibited  at  the  Burlington  Fine 
Arts  Club  in  1898,  and  was  noticed  as  follows :  By  Dr.  G.  Pauli  (Zeits. 
f.b.  Kunst,  N.F.  x.  p.  106),  who  called  attention  to  resemblances  to 
Bevilacqua's  "Adoration"  at  Dresden,  and  the  Madonna  of  the  Picci- 
nelli  Coll.  at  Bergamo ;  by  Dr.  Frizzoni  (Gazette  des  B-A.,  1898, 
pp.  296,  298)  ;  by  Dr.  W.  von  Seidlitz  (Repertorium,  xxx..  Heft  5). 


THE  HUNT  IN  MILAN 


of  blackened  wood,  closed  by  shutters  or  wings,  into  which 
the  frame  fits  under  glass.  The  fact  that  a  picture  is  so 
carefully  enshrined  is  thought  likely  to  dispose  a  buyer  to 
regard  it  instinctively  as  a  thing  of  special  value.  The 
glass  prevents  him,  at  least  until  it  is  removed,  from  examin- 
ing the  paint  too  closely,  so  that  a  strong  first  impression 
may  be  produced,  and  on  that  foundation  a  clever  salesman 
can  often  effect  a  satisfactory  bargain. 

This  "  Raphael,*'  when  its  doors  were  opened,  proved  to 
be  a  very  obvious  Flemish-Milanese  picture — one  of  several 
known  versions  of  the  "  Virgin  with  the  Cherries,"  a  com- 
position based  upon  some  Leonardesque  design,  which  was 
popular  with  Italianising  Flemings  in  the  first  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  I  find  in  my  old  diary  that  I  attributed 
this  picture,  which  I  presently  purchased,  to  Bernard  van 
Orley.  It  was  not  really  by  him,  but  it  came  out  of  that 
entourage.  No  one  has  yet  fully  accounted  for  the  origin 
and  popularity  of  the  type,  examples  of  which  can  be  seen 
in  almost  every  gallery  in  Europe  to-day.  Who  first  gave 
it  vogue ;  in  what  place  it  obtained  fame ;  where  and  why 
it  was  so  often  repeated — these  are  questions  to  which  no 
answer  has  yet  been  given.  My  example  of  it  was  a  good 
one,  with  an  attractive  landscape  of  Flemish  type  seen 
through  an  open  window.  I  soon  tired  of  it,  however,  and 
before  many  years  was  lucky  enough  to  exchange  it  and 
an  old  Steinway  grand  piano  for  a  Neri  di  Bicci  Madonna 
and  a  new  Steinway,  neither  of  which  has  yet  worn  out  its 
welcome. 

I  promised  to  call  on  the  Widow  Arrigoni  again,  and 
see  some  other  treasures  not  just  then  accessible,  but  it 
was  twenty  years  before  I  fulfilled  that  promise.  I  was 
then  spending  two  or  three  days  in  Milan,  and  had  drawn 


NERI  DI  BICCI 
2Vi  X  15  in. 


Facing  p.  24 


THE  WIDOW  ARRIGONI 


25 


an  absolute  blank  in  all  the  dealers'  shops  in  the  city.  I 
bethought  me,  by  some  sudden  illumination,  of  the  old  lady, 
and  found  her  name  in  the  directory,  though  not,  I  think, 
any  longer  as  a  dealer.  Arrived  at  her  door,  my  summons 
was  answered  by  a  curious-looking  domestic,  who,  in  reply 
to  my  question  whether  her  mistress  was  at  home,  informed 
me  that  she  was^  but  that  she  was,  at  that  very  moment,  in 
the  act  of  dying.  That,  I  believe,  was  the  last  time  when 
I  even  hoped  to  make  a  purchase  from  the  dealers  of  Milan. 
Those  I  once  knew  are  all  dead ;  their  successors,  except 
one  or  two  of  European  reputation,  have  now  nothing 
to  sell. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE   FINDING  OF  A  FOPPA 

I HEADED  each  of  the  preceding  chapters  in  turn, 
"  How  I  Found  a  Foppa,"  and  have  had  to  change  it, 
for  still  the  actual  adventure  eludes  my  pen;  but  I 
vow  this  time  that  the  story  shall  be  gotten  rid  of  before 
this  third  chapter  closes,  even  if  I  have  to  stretch  it  out 
to  a  hundred  pages.  Of  course,  the  simple  fact,  which 
might  have  been  told  in  two  lines,  is  that  in  Milan  I  found 
no  Foppa  at  all.  Hunt  high,  hunt  low  as  I  might,  starting 
early  and  returning  late,  no  Foppa  was  discoverable  be- 
cause none  was  in  the  market  then,  nor,  I  believe,  has  any 
turned  up  since  in  the  Lombard  capital.  My  twenty-franc 
piece  was  beginning  to  lie  more  than  lightly  in  my  pocket, 
and  looked  like  taking  flight.  But  this  was  not  the  worst. 
To  my  horror,  I  now  discovered  that  my  own  domestic 
prestige  was  in  peril.  A  bet  taken  in  the  presence  of  one's 
wife,  it  seems,  has  got  to  be  won,  or  she  will  be  shamed  by 
her  husband's  humiliation.  Perish  the  thought!  Frizzoni 
had  found  a  Foppa,  then  why  not  also  I?  If  there  were 
none  in  Milan,  one  must  be  sought  elsewhere.  Foppa  did 
not  only  live  in  Milan ;  where  else  did  he  live  ?  Brescia  ? 
Well,  then,  off  with  me  by  the  first  train  next  day  to 
Brescia,  and  "  don't  come  back  without  a  Foppa  " !  Here 
was  a  pretty  kettle  of  fish !    There  was  no  doubt  what  had 


LUIGI  OF  BRESCIA 


27 


to  be  done,  so  off  I  went  next  morning  by  an  eight-thirty 
train  to  Brescia. 

;  Arrived  there,  I  left  my  bag  at  the  station,  and 
wandered  forth  on  foot  into  the  town.  The  apparent  hope- 
lessness of  my  quest  came  upon  me,  and  I  determined  to 
commit  my  fate  to  chance.  The  whole  town  seemed  to 
resound  with  the  hammering  of  copper.  In  the  front  of 
one  little  open  workshop  after  another  sat  a  workman 
beating  out  some  copper  vessel,  and  behind  and  around 
him  were  piles  and  heaps  of  the  finished  product.  Who 
on  earth  could  want  so  many  copper  vessels?  I  watched 
the  copper  workers,  and  then  the  people  passing  me  on  the 
pavement,  I  don't  know  what  I  expected  to  find  in  their 
faces.  Presently,  a  kindly  looking,  intelligent  person 
attracted  my  attention,  and  I  made  bold  to  address  him. 

"  I  want  to  buy  some  old  pictures,"  I  said.  "  Can  you  tell 
me  how  to  set  to  work  to  find  them  ?  " 

"  Certainly,"  he  repHed.  "  Go  to  the  Italia  Inn  and  ask 
for  Luigi.  He  will  be  there,  or  not  far  off.  He  makes  it 
his  business  to  know  who  has  pictures  to  sell,  and  he  takes 
strangers  about  and  makes  his  Hving  that  way.  They  call 
him  Luigi  deir  Italia." 

I  thanked  the  gentlemaui  and  took  his  advice.  At  the 
Italia  I  found  Luigi,  an  energetic  and  apparently  honest 
person,  as  such  fouts  go.  He  has  been  dead  long  years 
now.  I  afterward  learnt  that  he  had  been  serviceable  to 
many  collectors  in  his  day.  Mr.  Henry  Willett  acquired 
through  him  that  remarkable  set  of  decorative  portrait 
heads  from  the  Castle  of  San  Martino,  which  are  now 
scattered  through  various  museums — ^the  Victoria  and 
Albert,  the  New  York  Metropolitan,  and  others — whereof 
more  anon. 


28  THE  FINDING  OF  A  FOPPA 


Luigi  at  once  took  me  in  hand.  I  was  careful  not  to  tell 
him  anything  about  Foppa,  though  it  would  not  have 
mattered  if  I  had  told  him,  for  he  had  never  heard  of 
Foppa,  nor  could  he  tell  the  work  of  one  artist  from 
another's.  "  I  will  take  you  first,"  he  said,  "  to  a  house  full 
of  old  pictures.  It  belongs  to  Nobile  Angelo  Mignani. 
He  is  an  old  fellow  who  paints,  and  he  gives  small  sums 
for  any  old  pictures  that  people  bring  him.  These  he  is 
almost  always  willing  to  sell" 

The  house  was  at  no  great  distance,  and  we  were  at 
once  admitted.  It  was  a  tall  and  spacious  dwelling,  in  a 
rather  narrow  street.  Internally,  it  was  much  out  of  repair, 
and  the  great  staircase  was  dark.  We  found  the  noble 
Angelo  at  home,  and  delighted  with  the  chance  of  a 
bargain.  He  and  Luigi  greeted  one  another  as  old  con- 
spirators, and  I  felt  like  a  chicken  about  to  be  plucked 
in  their  hands.  They  played  up  to  one  another,  and 
echoed  each  other's  praises  of  this  and  that.  The  storeys 
of  the  house  seemed  as  interminable  as  those  of  a  sky- 
scraper, but  that  was  because  they  were  so  full  of  things. 
On  the  first  floor  the  rooms  contained  framed  pictures, 
carved  chests,  heavy  furniture,  hangings,  and  church 
draperies.  I  wish  I  had  the  chance  of  choosing  amongst 
them  now,  for  then  I  understood  only  pictures,  and  not 
many  styles  of  them.  However,  all  the  pictures  I  saw  were 
bad.  Some  worse  than  others,  but  none  in  the  least 
attractive  to  me.  So  we  went  up  to  the  next  storey,  where 
things  were  more  dilapidated,  frames  incomplete,  panels 
cracked,  canvases  torn.  The  pictures  down  below  had  all 
been  fairly  complete,  and  were,  at  least,  gay  with  bright 
and  often  new  colours.  Noble  Angelo  now  told  me  that  he 
had  restored  them  himself,  while  these  pictures  were  wait- 


NOBILE  MIGNANI 


29 


ing  their  turn.  He  took  them  as  he  felt  indined.  I  believe 
him  to  have  been  the  worst  restorer  that  ever  lived.  He 
painted  on  an  old  altar-piece  as  a  child  paints  in  a  pattern- 
book,  using  only  three  or  four  shrill  colours,  and  laying 
them  on  thickly  within  uncertain  outlines. 

Higher  up,  we  came  to  rooms  filled  with  broken  altar- 
pieces,  unframed  panels,  and  piles  of  canvases.  They 
stood  in  rows,  leaning  against  one  another,  twenty  or  thirty 
deep.  I  worked  steadily  through  them  hour  after  hour, 
and  all  were  bad.  Thus  in  some  almost  abandoned  house 
in  Belgravia,  perhaps,  in  the  twenty-third  century,  the 
sweepings  of  the  rejected  pictures  of  nineteenth-century 
Academy  exhibitions  may  drift  together,  still  begging  for 
a  purchaser,  and  a  collector  may  turn  the  wrecks  over  and 
wonder  how  such  pictures  came  to  be  painted,  and,  even 
more,  by  what  mischance  they  have  survived.  With  less 
and  less  hope,  I  mounted  higher  and  higher,  and  we  all 
became  dejected — they,  because  nothing  they  showed 
could  tempt  me  to  buy,  and  I  because  I  found  no  Foppa 
nor  any  even  moderately  desirable  picture. 

At  long  last  we  reached  the  very  highest  attic,  and  in  it 
a  room  called  the  studio,  into  which  we  chmbed  by  a  ladder. 
Here  it  was  that  the  noble  Angelo  did  his  work  of  refresh- 
ment to  the  wrecks  that  came  into  his  hands.  As  the  door 
opened,  I  saw  the  floor  wholly  heaped  up  with  panel 
pictures  over  all  the  area  displayed.  But  yonder,  what  was 
that?  My  heart  almost  ceased  to  beat.  There  at  the  far 
end,  leaning  against  the  wall,  with  a  number  of  smaller 
predella  panels  leaning  against  it,  I  beheld  the  top  half 
of  a  small  Madonna  picture,  and  the  face  of  the  Virgin 
was  the  face  of  a  Foppa  and  no  other.  I  said  nothing.  I 
hardly  dared  to  look  that  way ;  in  fact,  I  turned  my  back 


THE  FINDING  OF  A  FOPPA 


on  the  disgraced  treasure  and  began  examining  a  village 
altar-piece  mounted  on  a  large  easel,  and  in  the  process  of 
undergoing  final  destruction  at  Mignani's  hands.  It  had 
never  been  anything  but  a  third-rate  work,  and  evil  had 
been  the  days  through  which  it  had  passed  ;  but  the  candles 
that  had  fallen  against  and  burnt  it  had  not  left  such 
abominable  traces  as  those  of  noble  Angelo's  brush.  Far 
other  was  his  opinion,  as  he  pointed  out  his  work  with  pride. 
I  had  to  say  that  the  picture  was  too  big  for  me.  Then 
he  began  on  the  predella  panels.  There  must  have  been  a 
hundred  of  them  on  the  floor,  poor,  wretched  things,  dis- 
honoured in  their  making,  their  life,  and  their  fate.  He 
saw  it  was  no  use,  and  evidently  did  not  think  the  Foppa 
Madonna  likely  to  be  any  more  attractive  to  me  than  the 
rest.  So  we  looked  out  of  the  window  and  admired  the 
really  wonderful  view  over  the  roofs  of  the  town  and  away 
to  the  foothills  of  the  Alps.  The  sun  was  shining ;  the 
noise  of  distant  copper  beating,  wafted  by  a  soft  breeze, 
mingled  with  the  hum  of  the  nearer  streets.  "Well,"  I 
said,  "  I  must  be  going ;  but  I  want  something  by  which  to 
remember  this  visit.  How  much  do  you  ask  for  that 
Madonna  there  against  the  wall  ?  "  He  named  a  moderate 
price,  and  I  accepted  it.  The  thing  was  wrapped  up  in  an 
old  newspaper.  Luigi  hitched  it  under  his  arm,  and  noble 
Angelo  conducted  us  down  the  ladder  and  all  the  dark 
stairs,  and  so  out  into  the  street.  "  I  will  now  go  and 
lunch,"  I  said,  "  but  first  show  me  the  way  to  the  telegraph 
office."  It  was  not  far  off.  "  I  have  bought  the  Foppa,"  I 
wired.  What  happened  during  the  remainder  of  the  day  I 
do  not  remember.  But  that  night  a  mysterious  thing 
occurred,  for  which  I  have  never  been  able  to  account, 
except  upon  the  assumption  that  some  evil  spirit  was 


A  FOPPA  FOUND 


31 


enraged  with  me  and  wanted  to  pay  me  out  for  having  out- 
witted him  in  the  matter  of  the  Foppa. 

In  my  bedroom  in  the  hotel  there  were  some  hooks 
fastened  in  the  underside  of  a  beam,  and  so  placed  that 
clothes  suspended  from  them  hung  clear  out  away  from 
any  wall  Even  if  you  were  to  have  swung  them  to  and 
fro,  they  would  not  have  reached  any  wall  or  come  in 
contact  with  any  other  solid  object  short  of  the  ceiling. 
Before  going  to  bed,  I  wound  up  my  watch,  and  then  put  it 
into  the  pocket  of  my  waistcoat  hanging  upon  one  of  the 
said  hooks.  I  carefully  locked  the  door  of  my  room, 
jumped  into  bed,  and,  with  pleasant  thoughts  of  the  Foppa 
and  a  triumphant  home-going,  was  soon  sound  asleep. 
Bright  sunlight  awoke  me  early  next  morning,  and  I  leapt 
out  of  bed.  Reaching  up  for  my  watch  to  know  the  time, 
my  fingers  encountered  broken  glass  in  the  pocket.  This 
was  surprising  to  begin  with,  but  it  was  much  more  sur- 
prising to  find,  not  merely  the  glass,  but  the  dial  of  the 
watch  broken,  and  presently  to  realise  that  the  works  also 
were  smashed — smashed  as  though  the  whole  thing  had 
been  pounded  in  a  mortar  with  a  heavy  iron  pestle.  In 
that  way  the  devil  tried  to  get  even  with  me.  But  I  was 
glad  that  he  had  selected  the  watch  instead  of  the  picture 
on  which  to  wreak  his  rage.  One  would  have  thought 
that  if  he  had  been  angry  about  the  picture  he  would  have 
smashed  it ;  but  he  didn't.    I  have  always  wondered  why. 

Of  course,  I  was  back  in  Milan  double-quick,  with  the 
old  panel  under  my  arm  and  glory  on  my  head.  The  very 
next  morning  we  called  on  Dr.  Frizzoni,  who  rejoiced  with 
us,  and  took  us  immediately  to  Morelli.  There  was,  of 
course,  no  shadow  of  a  doubt  about  the  Foppa,  for  all  its 
plastering  with  repaints.    The  face  was  untouched,  and  it 


32  THE  FINDING  OF  A  FOPPA 


told  its  story  beyond  possibility  of  mistake.  So  there  were 
congratulations  all  round,  and  much  discussion  as  to  the 
relation  of  the  new  picture  to  others  already  known.  But 
the  one  obvious  necessity  was  to  have  the  thing  cleaned 
and  its  real  surface  and  nature  exposed.  This  meant  that 
it  had  to  be  taken,  and  forthwith,  to  our  good  friend,  then 
and  ever  since.  Professor  Luigi  Cavenaghi,  than  whom  no 
better  physician  for  old  Italian  paintings  has  ever  Hved. 
Even  in  those  days,  he  had  accumulated  an  unrivalled 
experience,  and  possessed  unexampled  skill  in  this  difficult 
art ;  whilst  since  then  an  almost  countless  number  of  the 
greatest  masterpieces  in  the  world  have  passed  through  his 
hands. 

All  four  of  us  accordingly  made  a  rendezvous  for  the 
next  day  in  Cavenaghi^s  studio,  and  duly  kept  it.  The 
Foppa  was  placed  on  an  easel  and  work  at  once  began. 
Our  hearts  were  in  our  throats  with  unutterable  excitement, 
because  it  was  still  possible,  nay,  almost  probable,  that 
under  the  repaints  we  might  find  irreparable  damage.  Off 
from  the  child's  head  came  his  golden  curls,  and  a  red  cap 
took  their  place.  Other  no  less  remarkable  changes 
followed.  The  most  extraordinary  was  with  the  land- 
scape. Four  successive  landscapes  there  were,  one  on  the 
top  of  another.  Three  came  off  without  resistance,  and 
disclosed  the  original  beneath  in  perfect  preservation.  One 
wonders  what  kind  of  mania  possessed  people  to  deal  thus 
with  a  picture.  In  this  case,  not  an  inch  of  the  panel, 
except  the  Virgin's  face,  had  escaped  some  botcher's  hand, 
yet  for  all  this  over-painting  there  was  no  excuse.  The 
picture  underneath  was  in  sound  condition,  except  for  one 
or  two  small  injuries  in  unimportant  places,  each  of  them 
no  larger  than  a  threepenny  piece.    Foppa's  own  paint 


THE  PICTURE  CLEANED  33 


was  as  hard  as  enamel,  and  was  quite  unaffected  by  the 
solvents  that  swept  away  the  later  disfigurements.  But 
when  all  of  them  had  vanished  that  could  be  dissolved, 
there  still  remained  on  the  Virgin's  hood  some  very  ancient 
and  unnecessary  repainting,  which  Professor  Cavenaghi 
skilfully  chipped  off  with  the  sharp  edge  of  a  knife  gently 
tapped  like  a  chisel.  The  sight  of  work  so  skilfully  done 
was  a  joy  to  see.  These  last  hard  and  opaque  layers  came 
away  like  the  peelings  of  an  onion,  and  finally  the  original 
painting  was  before  us,  almost  as  fresh  as  when  it  left  the 
hand  of  the  fifteenth-century  artist.  The  crown  of  our 
satisfaction  was  thus  complete,  and  we  hugged  ourselves 
with  joy.* 

This,  however,  was  not  the  end  of  our  adventures  with 
Foppa.  Having  found  one  picture  by  him  after  these  ex- 
citing adventures  and  repeated  disappointments,  another 
fell  into  my  hands  like  a  mere  gift  from  the  gods  a  few 
days  later.  Brescia,  of  course,  was  to  us,  after  this,  a  place 
of  golden  delight ;  so  we  went  there  again  very  soon  to 
spend  a  few  days,  during  which  time  I  made  a  careful  study 
of  the  pictures  of  my  period  in  the  gallery,  besides  having 
further  adventures  with  Luigi,  then  and  in  later  years,  of 
which  more  anon.  I  was  particularly  struck  by  a  little 
picture  of  the  Crucifixion  by  Foppa,  which  seemed  then  to 
me,  and  still  remains,  one  of  the  most  pathetic  representa- 
tions of  that  subject  ever  painted.  With  that  well  in  my 
memory,  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  fail  in  recognising 
a  similar  work  by  the  same  master  if  it  happened  to  come 
my  way. 

A  few  days  later  I  was  in  Bergamo,  now  more  than  ever 

*  This  picture  is  now  in  the  well-known  collection  of  my  friend,  Mr. 
J.  G.  Johnson,  of  Philadelphia. 

C 


THE  FINDING  OF  A  FOPPA 


on  the  hunt.  Everyone  who  has  been  there  will  remember 
the  rope  railway  by  which  one  ascends  to  the  upper  town. 
I  cannot  now  recall  by  what  chance  I  was  led  that  morning. 
It  was,  I  know,  the  first  jubilee  day  of  Queen  Victoria, 
and  it  brought  me  uncommon  luck.  The  rope-train's 
upper  terminus  is  in  the  ground  floor  of  a  house  that  com- 
mands a  wonderful  view  over  the  Lombard  Plain,  then 
steaming  and  glimmering  in  mid-day  splendour.  Some 
luck  took  me  further  into  that  same  house.  I  mounted  its 
stone  staircase  to  an  upper  floor  and  knocked  at  the  door 
of  an  artist,  who  not  only  painted  pictures,  but  added  to 
his  income  by  dealing  in  Old  Masters.  I  bought  an  un- 
important picture  from  him  by  way  of  setting  the  ball 
rolling,  and  then  he  recommended  me  to  visit  the  school- 
master Gabezzeni,  whom  I  had  much  difficulty  in  finding. 
The  innkeeper  in  the  house  where  once  Colleoni  lived 
helped  me  to  run  him  to  earth,  but  not  till  he  had  tried 
to  sell  me  some  frescoed  portraits  of  the  Colleoni  family 
still  remaining  on  the  walls  of  one  of  the  rooms.  I  told 
him  he  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  himself,  and  went  oS 
in  dudgeon.  The  little  schoolmaster  had  all  the  arts  of  a 
fisherman,  and  treated  me  as  though  I  were  a  shy  trout,  to 
whom  he  offered  his  pictures  like  various  flies.  He  would 
not  approach  the  question  of  price  till  I  had  seen  all  his 
store,  and  he  thought  he  had  formed  some  idea  of  which 
I  liked  best.  Of  course,  I  correspondingly  tried  to  mystify 
him,  and  so  we  played  the  game  for  an  hour  or  two,  both 
thoroughly  enjoying  ourselves.  A  number  of  neighbours 
formed,  alternately,  audience  and  chorus,  and  prevented 
the  altercation  from  dropping  or  growing  dull. 

I  was  reminded  of  my  friend  Moberley  Bell's  story 
about  the  Cairo  carpet-seller.    A  certain  Anglo-Egyptian 


HOW  TO  BARGAIN 


35 


official  saw  and  coveted  a  carpet  in  his  shop.  He  inquired 
the  price.  "  Thirty  pounds/'  said  the  dealer.  "  Nonsense," 
said  the  official ;  "  I'll  give  you  fifteen."  The  dealer  tried 
to  bargain,  and  suggested  twenty-eight  pounds,  but  the 
official  stuck  to  his  price  and  went  his  way.  Next  day 
he  looked  in  again,  offered  his  fifteen  pounds,  was  refused, 
and  went  away.  The  process  was  repeated  at  intervals 
for  some  time,  and  always  with  the  same  result.  One  day 
the  official  saw  this  same  carpet  on  the  floor  of  a  friend's 
room.  "  Hullo,"  he  said,  "  you  bought  that  carpet  at 
Abdullah's !  How  much  did  you  pay  for  it  ?  "  "  Twelve 
pounds  "  was  the  reply. 

"  Twelve  pounds !  Why,  IVe  offered  him  fifteen  pounds 
over  and  over  again,  and  he  always  refused.  How  did  you 
manage  to  get  it  for  twelve  ? "  Off  went  the  disgusted 
official  to  Abdullah  and  complained. 

"YouVe  sold  for  twelve  pounds  to  Colonel    the 

carpet  which  you  have  always  refused  to  sell  to  me  for 
fifteen.    Why  did  you  do  that  ?  " 

"Sir,"  said  he,  "you  came  to  my  shop  and  asked  the 
price  of  the  carpet,  and  I  told  you  thirty  pounds.  You  said 
fifteen,  which  was  all  right  so  far ;  and  then  I  said  twenty- 
eight.  It  was  then  your  turn  to  raise  your  offer  a  little, 
and  we  should  have  talked  together,  and  I  would  have  sent 
out  for  coffee,  and  we  would  have  bargained  together  in  a 
kindly  fashion,  and  by  degrees,  you  going  up  a  little  and  I 
coming  down  a  good  deal,  we  should  have  come  to  terms, 
and  you  would  have  bought  the  carpet.  But  you  always 
rushed  into  my  shop  and  said, '  TU  give  you  fifteen  pounds,* 
and  off  you  went.  In  that  fashion,  I  would  not  have  sold 
you  the  carpet  till  the  end  of  my  days.  But  what  did 
Colonel    do?    He  came  to  my  shop  and  asked  the 


36  THE  FINDING  OF  A  FOPPA 


price  of  the  carpet,  and  I  said  '  Thirty  pounds.'  He  in  turn 
offered  me  five  pounds.  But  he  came  in  and  sat  down 
and  we  talked  and  bargained  together,  and  by  degrees,  he 
raising  his  offers  and  I  lowering  my  price,  we  came 
together,  and  I  sold  him  the  carpet  for  twelve  pounds, 
which  I  would  not  sell  to  you  for  fifteen.  To  buy  and 
sell  as  you  would  do  may  be  all  right  for  your  people,  but  it 
is  not  our  way.  You  had  better  go  to  the  European  stores 
if  you  want  to  buy  like  that." 

The  Italian  dealers  at  the  time  I  am  writing  of  retained, 
and  in  out-of-the-way  places  they  still  retain,  something  of 
this  Oriental  attitude  of  mind.  Buying  and  selling  to  them 
is  not  a  mere  matter  of  exchange  of  a  thing  against 
money ;  it  is  a  pleasant  way  of  spending  time  and  an  oppor- 
tunity for  cultivating  conversation.  A  bargain  is  not  so 
much  a  matter  of  science  as  of  art,  in  which  each  party 
has  to  display  his  human  qualities,  and  not  merely  effect 
a  deal,  but  obtain  some  insight  into  the  character  and 
quality  of  the  other.  Thus  the  schoolmaster  and  I 
wrestled  together  for  an  hour  or  two.  I  forget  what  the 
pictures  were  that  he  had  for  sale.  One,  I  know,  was  a 
rather  large  canvas  painted  by  Moroni,  which  had  been 
partly  burned  in  a  church  fire.  The  fragment  remaining 
had  been  cut  into  pieces,  with  a  single  figure  or  mere  head 
on  each,  and  I  began  by  buying  a  cherub  for  a  few  francs 
as  a  sort  of  entree.  The  real  piece  de  resistance  was  the 
Foppa,  which  finally  passed  into  my  possession,  and  was 
duly  removed  to  Milan  when  I  returned  there  on  the 
following  day. 

The  picture  represents  a  half -figure  of  the  dead  Christ, 
as  it  were,  standing  in  the  tomb,  with  the  cross  and  other 
instruments  of  the  Passion  behind.    It  probably  once 


Facing  p.  36 


ANOTHER  FOPPA 


37 


formed  the  top  panel  of  a  composite  altar-piece,  and 
perhaps  the  other  dismembered  panels  are  scattered  in 
different  museums.  The  Christ  is  of  astonishing  dignity 
and  beauty,  and  the  whole  treatment  of  the  subject,  which 
is  emblematic  of  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  Eucharist,  is 
very  fine.  The  delicate  light  and  shade  of  it,  throwing 
the  head  into  high  relief  and  dissembling  the  accessories 
as  merely  decorative  adjuncts,  which  do  not  attract  the 
eye,  but  only  serve  to  frame  the  figure,  is  unobtrusively 
clever  in  a  high  degree.  The  Brescia  Virgin  and  Child 
was  a  brighter  and  more  attractive  picture,  a  decorative 
rendering  of  a  traditional  group.  The  Bergamo  C.  C.  is 
an  imaginative  work  of  high  originality,  the  like  of  which 
Foppa  seldom  if  ever  again  produced. 

*  Both  the  Foppas  were  exhibited  at  the  Burlington  Fine  Arts  Club 
Exhibition  in  1898.  They  were  discussed  in  the  same  articles  as  those 
cited  above  (p.  23,  footnote)  for  the  Bevilacqua.  Dr.  Pauli  attributed 
the  Christ  to  Foppa's  early  period,  little  later  than  the  Bergamo 
"  Crucifixion."  Sir  Claude  Phillips  described  the  Christ  as  "noble*  and 
reposeful  in  sentiment."  Miss  C.  J.  Ffoulkes  and  R.  Maiocchi  in  their 
book  ("Vincenzo  Foppa  of  Brescia,"  London,  1909,  pp.  87-90)  assign 
the  Christ  to  about  1460- 1470.  They  continue  as  follows:  "The 
owner  of  this  picture  and  Morelli  (who  saw  it  when  it  was  first 
acquired)  considered  it  to  be  not  much  later  than  the  Crucifixion  of 
1456.  The  drawing  of  the  cranium  certainly  recalls  that  of  the  central 
figure  in  the  picture  at  Bergamo,  and  the  hands,  in  form,  come  very 
near  to  the  hands  of  the  Trivulzio  and  Berenson  Madonnas.  The 
expression  of  the  head  is  significant  and  touching,  though  the  type  is 
unusually  soft  and  gentle.  The  outline  is  still  rigid  and  primitive,  but 
the  modelling  of  the  body  is  remarkably  good  for  so  early  a  date,  and 
in  this  particular  it  is  interesting  to  compare  the  drawing  of  the  form 
with  the  figure  in  the  three  versions  of  the  St.  Sebastian,  with  the 
Dead  Christ  in  the  Piet^  of  the  Berlin  Gallery,  and  with  that  of  the 
Bernacoin  collection,  all  works  of  much  later  date.  Innumerable 
examples  of  this  subject  are  met  with  in  every  branch  of  art,  from  the 
fourteenth  century  onwards  ;  and  among  panel  paintings  this  picture 
may  have  been  the  prototype  of  a  vast  number  of  works  of  the  school, 
many  of  which  are  still  existing  in  North  Italy  and  in  Liguria." 


CHAPTER  IV. 


MORE   FINDS   IN  MILAN 

THUS  I  can  now  say  with  thankfulness,  Foppa  is  at 
last  finally  swept  out  of  the  way,  and  my  narrative 
can  proceed,  though  not  strictly  on  chronological 
lines ;  for  the  necessities  of  the  case  have  already  carried 
it  beyond  the  points  of  occurrence  of  several  incidents 
which  must  find  place  somewhere  within  the  covers  of  this 
little  book.  There  is,  for  instance,  the  story  of  the  Lotto, 
which  certainly  ought  to  have  been  told  before  this;  but 
it  simply  would  not  come  in,  and  had  to  be  bundled  aside 
to  await  its  chance.  I  had  better  set  it  down  here,  and  at 
once,  before  I  am  switched  away  on  some  other  unfore- 
seen track. 

It  was  the  very  day  we  were  going  to  Cavenaghi's 
studio,  with  the  first  Foppa  under  my  arm,  that  I  stumbled 
across  the  Lotto.  I  simply  walked  into  an  upstairs  shop 
that  I  had  not  before  noticed,  and  there  it  was  on  the  table, 
the  very  first  thing  I  saw.  Lotto  at  that  time  was  outside 
the  rather  narrow  range  of  my  connoisseurship,  so  I  cannot 
say  that  I  recognised  the  picture  for  what  it  was.  But  I  at 
least  knew  that  it  was  not  by  Rottenhammer,  as  the  dealer 
tentatively  suggested.  Rottenhammer  was  a  favourite  name 
with  ignorant  dealers  then  for  any  smooth-surfaced  picture 
with  a  landscape  background  that  obviously  could  not  be 
called  Raphael;,  or  Titian,  or  Correggio,  or  by  some  other 


Facing  p.  38 


LORENZO  LOTTO 


39 


of  the  few  great  names  they  knew ;  but  I  never  could  find 
out  what  it  was  that  induced  them  to  pitch  on  that  seven- 
teenth-century German's  name  rather  than  any  other.  This 
dealer,  at  any  rate,  had  his  doubts,  and  admitted,  that  the 
picture  on  the  easel  might  be  by  some  other  artist ;  but  it 
was  beyond  his  wits  to  attain  any  certainty  in  the  matter. 
All  I  could  surely  assert,  in  the  state  of  my  knowledge 
then,  was  that  there  was  Venice  at  the  heart  of  the  work, 
and  more  particularly  Giorgione;  beyond  that,  I  only 
knew  that  here  was  something  of  a  finer  excellence  than 
any  picture  we  had  yet  had  a  chance  to  buy.  And  now  a 
curious  thing  happened.  With  the  opportunity  of  our  lives 
before  us,  and  only  a  small  price  demanded,  I  simply  could 
not  decide  to  walk  off  with  the  picture.  My  wife  entreated ; 
the  man  offered  to  take  less ;  it  was  all  no  use,  and  I  de- 
parted from  the  shop  and  left  it  behind. 

But  with  the  night  came  sanity,  and  on  our  way  to 
Cavenaghi's  studio  next  day  we  stopped  and  just  picked 
up  the  treasure.  The  dealer,  for  luck,  threw  in  a  majolica 
alberello,  probably  worth  as  much  since  as  what  we  paid 
for  both.  He  also  told  us  that  the  picture  had  formerly 
been  in  the  Castelbarco  collection.  We  tied  it  up  with 
the  Foppa,  which  we  were  taking  to  be  cleaned,  and  by  a 
curious  coincidence  the  two  panels  were  of  exactly  the 
same  dimensions,  only  differing  in  thickness.  Arriving  at 
Cavenaghi's,  where,  as  above  told,  we  met  Morelli  and 
Frizzoni,  I  was  able  to  spring  a  surprise  on  them,  for  my 
packet  only  seemed  to  contain  the  Foppa,  and,  when  that 
had  been  dealt  with,  the  second  panel  seemed  to  arrive  by 
magic.  It  was  easy  to  see  how  astonished  and  pleased 
they  were  when  I  offered  it  to  them.  I  could  not  follow 
what  they  said  to  one  another  at  first,  but  only  their  swiftly 


MORE  FINDS  IN  MILAN 


reached  conclusion.  "  It  is  his ;  it  is  certainly  his."  Then 
I  had  to  expose  my  own  ignorance,  and  demand  to  whom 
it  was  they  so  confidently  ascribed  it,  and  they  replied, 
"  Lotto."  "  But,"  I  said  to  Morelli,  "  I  noticed  that  at  first 
you  seemed  to  have  some  other  artist  in  your  mind;  who 
was  that  ? "  He  replied  that,  for  a  moment,  it  almost 
seemed  to  him  that  it  might  be  by  Giorgione,  but  only  for 
a  moment.  It  was  certainly  painted  by  Lotto  in  his  early 
Giorgionesque  days,  about  the  time  when  he  painted  the 
St.  Jerome  in  the  Louvre,  which  has  a  similar  beautiful 
landscape  background.  Since  then  Lotto  has  been  the 
subject  of  a  masterly  study  by  Mr.  Berenson,  in  which  our 
picture  is  carefully  analysed."^  But  he  makes  the  same 
mistake  that  we  did  in  calling  it  at  first "  Danae,"  with  whom 
the  subject  has  really  nothing  to  do.  Under  Cavenaghi's 
skilful  hands  the  small  repaints,  clumsily  added  to  cover  up 
a  single  injury  in  an  unimportant  position,  were  soon  re- 
moved, and  in  due  season  the  damage  was  perfectly 
repaired. 

As  I  have  questioned  the  correctness  of  the  name  used 
by  both  Morelli  and  Berenson,  a  brief  discussion  of  the 
actual  subject  of  the  picture  cannot  be  avoided.  In  the 
centre  there  lies  a  little  white-robed  maiden,  and  some- 
thing is,  indeed,  being  poured  into  her  lap  from  the  sky ; 
but  it  is  a  baby  Cupid,  not  Jupiter,  who  does  the  pouring, 
and  the  shower  consists,  not  of  gold,  but  of  flowers.  Jupiter 

*  B.  Berenson,  "Lorenzo  Lotto,"  London,  1895,  p.i.  He  says  that 
the  girl's  face  recalls  that  of  the  Virgin  in  Alvise  Vivarini's  Madonna 
in  the  Redentore  at  Venice.  He  cites  also  other  resemblances  to  Alvise 
and  to  Jacopo  de'  Barbari.  In  recent  years,  however,  Mr.  Berenson 
has  altered  his  attitude  towards  iVlvise,  and  he  might  now  be  less 
inclined  to  assign  to  him  so  much  influence  in  the  formation  of  Lotto's 
style.  See  also  Morelli's  "Italian  Painters,"  Vol.  II.,  London,  1893, 
pp.  46,  51. 


A  MAIDEN'S  DREAM 


41 


pouring  gold  into  Danae  s  lap  is  a  wholly  different  subject 
from  a  Cupid  pouring  flowers  into  the  lap  of  this  very  pure 
and  simple  girl,  who  seems  as  far  removed  as  possible  from 
the  kind  of  person  that  would  sell  herself  for  money,  even  if 
a  god  gave  it.  The  meaning  of  the  subject  is  indicated  by 
the  presence  in  the  foreground,  on  either  side,  of  a  female 
satyr  of  the  woods  and  a  god  of  the  fountain.  These  are 
the  genii  of  the  fair  landscape,  in  the  midst  of  which  the 
maiden  lies  day-dreaming  at  the  foot  of  a  laurel.  There 
are  trees  and  hills  behind ;  a  sunset  sky,  ruddy  below,  deep 
blue  above,  fills  the  rest  of  the  panel.  The  maiden  is  dream- 
ing of  love  as  a  vision  of  flowers  falling  upon  her.  Pro- 
bably the  artist  was  moved,  by  some  poem  of  the  day,  not 
yet  identified,  or  perhaps  the  subject  was  given  to  him  by 
a  patron. 

It  was  only  during  a  very  brief  period  in  the  childhood 
of  the  Renaissance  that  such  a  picture  could  have  been 
painted  at  all.  Its  naive  charm  was  impossible  to  the  more 
sophisticated  artists  of  a  few  years  later,  whilst  a  little 
earlier  the  old  religious  spirit  still  retained  too  much 
potency  for  this  pure  paganism  to  be  possible.  Save  for 
Giorgione,  Lotto  could  not  have  painted  thus.  The  very 
naivete  of  the  picture  doubtless  seemed  to  its  own  maker 
a  defect,  which  he  was  soon  after  able  to  avoid.  Every 
great  school  of  art  passing  through  its  various  inevitable 
stages,  from  uncouth  and  tentative  beginnings  to  culmina- 
tion of  flower,  exuberance  of  fruit,  and  final  decay,  does,  at 
some  moment  of  its  youth,  produce  works  of  extraordinary 
charm  and  naivete.  Venetian  artists  passed  through  this 
phase  about  the  years  1490  to  15 10.  The  Florentines 
passed  through  it  a  trifle  earlier.  Albertinelli  exemplified 
it  in  his  "Adam  and  Eve"  at  Agram.    Fra  Bartolomeo 


42  MORE  FINDS  IN  MILAN 


would  have  produced  perfect  examples  of  it  had  he  been 
less  pious.  Perugino's  "Apollo  and  Marsyas"  in  the 
Louvre,  Raphael's  "  Knighf  s  Dream,"  the  National  Gallery 
"Amor  and  Castitas"  (now  given  to  Cosimo  Roselli),  are 
all  delightful  products  of  this  attractive  phase  of  the  early 
Renaissance.  The  same  spirit  lingered  on  later  in  Car- 
paccio,  and  occasionally  re-emerged  in  other  Venetians; 
but  it  was  soon  lost  in  the  greater  powers  and  mightier  con- 
ceptions of  the  culminating  artists,  who  yet,  in  the  full 
triumph  of  their  unrivalled  maturities,  never  again  attained 
the  particular  charm  which  in  no  picture  is  more  visibly 
incorporated  than  in  this  "  Maiden's  Dream  " — ^the  name 
by  which  I  have  chosen  to  call  it. 

I  was  then  too  young  and  immature  to  imagine  that 
perhaps  MorelH  might  feel  a  little  sore  at  such  a  stroke  of 
luck  coming  to  so  callow  a  collector  as  I  was.  I  had  bought 
it,  evidently  for  little  money,  under  his  very  shadow.  He 
might  well  think  that  fortune  was  unkind  not  to  have  given 
it  to  him.  But  it  seemed  to  me  then  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world  that  he  and  our  admirable  friend,  Dr.  Friz- 
zoni,  should  have  patted  me  on  the  back  and  rejoiced  with 
me,  and  made  us  feel  that  our  pleasure  was  no  less  theirs. 
Yet  such  magnanimity  is  of  the  rarest,  and  just  then  in  my 
presence  was  manifest  that  real  nobility  of  character  which 
Morelli  carried  through  life,  and  which  gave  him  not  merely 
the  respect  of  scholars  and  critics,  but  the  admiration,  and 
even  the  affection,  of  a  wider  circle. 

He  bade  me  have  the  picture  well  photographed,  as  he 
would  have  occasion  to  need  it,  and  it  has  always  been  one 
of  the  minor  enduring  regrets  of  my  life  that  I  failed  him 
in  this  matter.  When  the  picture  arrived  in  England  I  did 
have  a  photograph  of  it  made,  but  it  turned  out  poorly.  A 


MORELLFS  KINDNESS  43 


year  or  two  later  Dr.  Frizzoni  wrote  to  me :  "  Ella  conoscera 
il  primo  vol.  della  nuova  opera  di  Morelli  (Gall.  Borghese  e 
Doria).  Ora  egli  lavora  assiduamente  al  secondo  nel  quale 
trattera  del  Lotto  in  particolare.  M'incarica  quindi  di 
chiederle  Ella  potesse  procurargli  una  buona  fotografia 
della  sua  Danae  que  servirebbe  per  la  riproduzione  nel 
volume  stesso  come  punto  di  partenza  per  Tartista."  I  sent 
him  the  bad  photograph,  but  it  would  not  reproduce,  and, 
the  picture  being  in  Liverpool  and  I  in  Egypt,  or  some 
such  place,  a  better  was  not  procurable  in  time  for  his 
publication. 

Since  then  the  picture,  like  the  Foppas  and  others  above- 
mentioned,  has  often  been  exhibited,  and  is  well  known  to 
all  who  study  the  art  of  its  land  and  period.  It  has,  no 
doubt,  given  much  pleasure  to  others,  but  no  one  has  had 
the  chance  to  feel  in  its  presence  what  we  have  felt,  on 
whom  it  burst  so  unexpectedly,  and  to  whom  it  was  the  key 
that  unlocked  a  whole  school  and  phase  of  the  greatest 
pictorial  art  of  Europe  and  the  world. 

When  the  picture  was  exhibited  in  1905 — I  believe  at 
the  Burlington  Fine  Arts  Club* — ^the  following  notice  of  it 
appeared  in  the  AthencBum  (December  2nd,  1905)  by  a 
writer  whose  style  will  be  readily  recognised : — 

"No  one  has  ever  doubted  that  Sir  Martin  Conway's 
so-called  Danae  is  not  only  the  earliest  existing  work  by 
Lotto,  but  also  in  many  ways  the  most  entirely  enjoyable 
of  all  his  paintings.  For  Lotto  was  an  artist  of  exquisite 
sensibility  if  imperfect  talent,  and,  in  consequence,  he  pro- 
mised more  than  he  could  ever  perform.  Here,  in  this  early 
work,  which  breathes  the  fine  earnestness  and  illusion  of 

^  Or  perhaps  in  the  Venetian  Exhibition  at  the  New  Gallery,  where 
it  also  appeared. 


44  MORE  FINDS  IN  MILAN 


youth,  he  is  really  greater  in  what  he  suggests  than  in  the 
imperfect  accomplishment  of  his  maturity." 

It  has  entertained  me  to  recount  thus  at  length  these 
early  adventures  of  ours  in  the  field  of  Italian  picture  col- 
lecting, and  I  hope  the  reader  has  been  able  to  follow  me 
so  far  without  weariness.  Evidently,  however,  I  must  not 
trespass  too  far  on  his  patience,  being,  as  I  am,  completely 
in  his  power,  and  able  to  be  switched  off  in  a  moment  by 
the  mere  closing  of  the  pages,  as  one  switches  off  a  need- 
less electric  lamp.  The  remaining  acquisitions  of  this 
extraordinary  six  weeks  of  good  luck  can  only  be  recorded 
in  brief  fashion.  In  all,  as  far  as  I  remember,  we  took 
home  some  thirty  pictures,  most  of  minor  imf)ortance,  which 
I  afterward  sent  to  the  sale-room,  and  have  regretted  ever 
since.  But  besides  the  two  Foppas,  the  Lotto,  and  the 
Bevilacqua  above  described,  four  other  pictures  by 
Romanino,  Tiepolo,  Cotignola,  and  of  the  school  of 
Moretto,  cannot  go  unrecorded. 

The  Romanino  came  out  of  a  private  house  at  Brescia, 
in  which  were  quite  a  number  of  attractive  pictures, 
amongst  them  a  Moretto  Visitation,  which  I  have  since 
seen  in  some  public  gallery.  Our  picture  is  a  Virgin  and 
Child  with  the  little  St.  John,  not  beautiful  in  form,  but 
agreeable  in  colour.  It  possesses  something  of  Venetian 
warmth,  but  the  peculiar  red  of  the  Virgin's  robe  is 
Romanino's  own,  and  so  is  the  dark  slaty-blue  of  the  cloak, 
whilst  the  plain  architectural  background  of  marble  is 
obviously  Brescian.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Romanino's  pupil,  Francesco  Prato  of  Caravaggio,  had  a 
hand  in  this  work,  as  in  several  other  of  the  same  artist's 
pictures,  notably  the  large  painting  in  the  National  Gallery. 

A  full-length  life-size  St.  Peter,  leaning  on  a  stone 


Facing  p.  44 


SIX  WEEKS  OF  GOOD  LUCK  45 


pedestal  or  balustrade,  with  his  chin  resting  on  his  hand, 
manifests  unmistakably  the  design  of  Moretto ;  the  drapery 
is  his,  and  so  is  the  chord  of  colour  and  the  rather  smoky 
blue  sky  and  rounded  cumulus  clouds.  This  canvas 
formed  part  of  the  wall  decoration  of  a  chamber  or  chapel 
belonging  to  the  Fenaroli  family  at  Brescia,  which  was 
supphed  by  Moretto.  Of  course,  most  of  the  actual  paint- 
ing must  have  been  done  by  assistants.  There  were  also 
figures  of  Paul,  Jerome,  Solomon,  and  John  the  Evangelist, 
but  the  Peter  was  far  the  best,  and  I  think  that  the  master 
himself  had  some  hand  in  the  actual  painting.  The  series 
is  mentioned  by  Crowe  and  Cavalcaselle,  who  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  informed  of  their  original  purpose.* 

At  this  time,  but  I  forget  whether  in  Brescia  or  Bergamo, 
I  also  acquired  a  goodi  example  of  Tiepolo — one  of  those 
small,  upright  canvases  which  seem  to  bear  designs  for  vast 
wall-paintings.  I  remember  to  have  been  attracted  by  a 
distant  vision  of  it  in  some  corner  of  a  shop,  owing  to  its 
likeness  to  one  of  the  two  pictures  which  I  had  seen  Sir 
Frederick  Burton  purchase  for  the  National  Gallery  at  the 
Beckett-Denison  sale  at  Christie's  two  years  before.  It 
appeared  to  me  to  be  one  of  the  same  series,  the  figures 
being  grouped  under  the  similar  enframing  arch  of  an  open 
portico.  Over  their  heads  is  a  boy  angel  casually  swoop- 
ing about  in  the  air,  and  being  at  the  moment  upside  down, 
but  entirely  comfortable  and  enjoying  himself.  The  mean- 
ing of  the  picture  is  clear  enough.  St.  Peter  is  seen  en- 
throned on  a  high  pedestal,  like  St.  Augustine  in  the 
National  Gallery  picture.  He  is  stretching  out  his  key 
toward   Faith,   a   blue-robed,   white-winged  lady-angel 


German  edition.  Vol.  VI.,  1876,  p.  480. 


46  MORE  FINDS  IN  MILAN 


standing  before  him.  In  front  is  the  swarthy  cind  mascu- 
line figure  of  Paganism,  fallen  off  the  globe  of  the  world 
and  lying  prone,  with  his  overthrown  incense  altar  and 
books  beside  him.  The  whole  is  painted  with  the  dextrous 
fluency  characteristic  of  the  eighteenth-century  Venetians, 
and  especially  of  Tiepolo,  and  is  in  perfect  preservation. 

Last  to  be  mentioned,  though  of  earlier  date,  is  a  small 
but  very  beautiful  Httle  panel  picture  by  that  rare  painter 
of  the  Romagna,  Francesco  ZaganeUi,  of  Cotignola,  by 
whom  there  are  pictures  in  the  Brera,  and  at  Naples, 
Ravenna,  Berlin,  Chantilly,  and  Dublin,  as  well  as  an  im- 
portant altar-piece  in  the  collection  of  Mr.  David  Erskine. 
Mine  is  a  small  half-length  of  St.  Catherine,  painted  with 
great  smoothness  of  finish.  The  influence  of  Perugino  is 
evident  in  the  design,  but  all  the  critics  agree  in  the  attri- 
bution to  Cotignola,  which,  besides,  is  rendered  certain  by 
the  appearance  of  the  same  model  in  the  same  costume  on 
one  of  his  altar-pieces  in  the  Brera.  In  his  large  pictures 
the  composition  often  seems  to  lack  unity,  the  figures 
being  put  together  rather  like  the  parts  of  a  puzzle,  but  his 
individual  figures  are  often  expressive  and  beautiful.  He 
appears  to  have  been  fond  of  upturned  eyes,  and  he  painted 
the  eyeball  very  full  and  round,  as,  for  instance,  in  the 
Berlin  Annunciation.  There  is  a  delicate  drawing  by  him 
at  Stockliolm,  which  was  a  study  for  the  small  Madonna 
at  Chantilly.  He  designed  with  facility  and  grace  decora- 
tive details,  such  as  foliated  friezes  or  pilaster  panels.  The 
little  St.  Catherine  shows  him  at  his  best.  He  is  evidently 
happier  and:  more  at  home  in  work  on  a  small  scale,  like  a 
Flemish  painter.  He  could  linger  lovingly  over  details  and 
find  scope  for  his  decorative  predilections  in  the  crown,  the 
embroidered  borders,  the  angel  clasp,  the  Httle  pearls  and 


MORETTO 

65  X  384  in. 


Facing  p.  46 


COTIGNOLA 


47 


tassels,  and  the  ring,  all  of  which  he  finished  with  scrupulous 
care,  so  that  a  magnifying  glass  is  required  to  manifest  their 
completeness.  My  wife  at  once  annexed  this  picture  of 
her  patron  saint  as  specially  her  own,  and  none  has  better 
kept  its  place. 

Nowadays,  after  such  a  streak  of  luck  as  we  had  in  that 
early  summer  at  Milan,  I  should  know  better  than  to  quit 
the  field  unless  overwhelming  necessity  compelled.  But 
the  world  then  contained  other  wonders  no  less,  perhaps 
even  more,  enthralling  to  me  than  works  of  art.  These  were 
snow  mountains.  The  climbing  season  was  at  hand,  and 
the  call  of  the  glaciers  inexorable.  So  we  packed 
up  our  spoils,  shipped  them  off  to  England,  and  by  July  gth 
I  was  on  the  arete  of  the  Nadelhom,  suffering  horrible 
pains  from  lack  of  condition,  but  rejoicing  in  the  glory  of  a 
world  where  there  are  no  dealers  and  nothing  to  hunt,  save 
new  routes  up  peaks  or  over  passes. 


CHAPTER  V. 


HERE  AND  THERE   IN  ITALY 

A FEW  years  passed  before  another  opportunity  came 
for  devoting  any  considerable  time  to  the  hunt  for 
works  of  art  in  Italy.  I  had  been  enjoying  an  un- 
usually successful  mountaineering  season,  which  was  sud- 
denly terminated  by  storms  and  snowfalls  of  exceptional 
ferocity.  All  the  high  peaks  became  inaccessible,  and 
climbers  were  driven  away  home  in  crowds  before  their 
appointed  dates.  I  spent  a  week  walking  up  hills  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Italian  Lakes,  and  it  was  while  seated 
on  the  summit  of  one  of  them  that  a  sudden  and  irresistible 
desire  came  upon  me  to  turn  my  back  on  the  snow-laden 
Alps,  and  take  up  again  in  the  cities  of  North  Italy  the  old 
hunt  which  had  been  so  successful  in  1887. 

I  had  observed  that  the  great  dealers  in  London,  Paris, 
and  elsewhere  obtained  much  of  their  stock  from  smaller 
but  still  important  dealers  who  were  themselves,  respec- 
tively, the  most  important  in  such  cities  as  Milan,  Venice, 
Florence,  and  the  like.  These  dealers  in  turn  gathered 
what  they  had  for  sale  by  going  the  rounds  of  the  yet 
smaller  men,  beneath  whom  again  were  the  scouts  who 
visited  the  villages  and  attended  the  country  sales.  As  at 
each  step  up  this  scale  prices  were  at  least  doubled,  it  was 
evident  that  whoso  would  buy  cheap  must  go  as  near  the 
fountain-head  as  possible.    My  former  campaign  had  been 


Facing  p.  48 


THE  BRIANZA 


49 


amongst  the  smaller  dealers,  but  it  occurred  to  me  that 
if  I  pursued  my  search  into  the  villages  themselves  I  might 
be  yet  more  fortunate.  It  was  a  pretty  plan,  but  there 
were  a  good  many  villages  and  country  villas  in  Italy,  and 
it  had  not  occurred  to  me  that  to  ransack  them  would  be 
work  for  several  lifetimes,  rather  than  for  a  few  autumnal 
weeks,  which  were  all  I  had  to  spare. 

There  was,  however,  a  district  famed  for  its  beauty 
which  I  had  long  wished  to  visit.  It  was  actually  at  my 
feet  on  the  hill  where  I  was  at  the  moment  sitting  when 
my  determination  was  formed.  It  was  the  Brianza — that 
region  of  chaotic  little  hills  and  lakes,  with  villas  and  vil- 
lages patched  about,  which  lies  between  Como  and  Lecco, 
and  stretches  out  somewhat  southward,  having  been  shaped 
and  fashioned  out  of  the  terminal  moraines  of  the  vast 
Alpine  glaciers  of  the  Ice  Age,  reaching  out  at  their  furthest 
toward  the  great  Lombard  Plain.  I  decided  to  traverse 
this  region  on  foot,  combining  the  enjoyment  of  its  beauti- 
ful landscapes  with  a  hunt  for  works  of  art  in  its  villages, 
farmhouses,  and  villas.  I  started  early  one  morning  a  few 
days  later  from  Bellaggio,  with  Burton's  story  of  his  journey 
to  Mecca  in  one  pocket,  and  some  light  provisions  iri 
another.  How  well  I  still  remember  the  beauty  of  the  way 
as  I  mounted  along  the  backbone  of  the  ridge  dividing  the 
two  arms  of  Como  Lake,  with  a  fine  disregard  of  roads  and 
even  footpaths,  and  no  kind  of  idea  whither  I  was  going 
or  what  I  was  going  to  do. 

Presently  I  passed  over  a  col,  and  began  the  descent  of 
the  Val  Assina.  I  lunched  by  the  roadside  near  a  village, 
and  instituted  casual  enquiries  as  to  whether  anyone 
about  had  any  old  things  to  sell.  It  soon  became  apparent 
that  everything  not  new  was  alike  "  antica  "  in  these  parts. 
D 


so  HERE  AND  THERE  IN  ITALY 


Before  long  I  thought  I  was  hot  on  the  scent  of  something 
really  precious ;  exactly  what  it  was  I  could  not  learn. 
It  was  to  be  very  beautiful,  very  old,  I  gathered,  and 
I  should  find  it  in  that  farm  away  off  up  a  long  hillside 
on  which  the  sun  was  shining  hotly.  I  toiled  exceedingly 
in  the  ascent,  and  arrived  gasping  at  the  door.  My 
enquiries  elicited  an  immediate  response.  I  was  taken 
into  a  room,  and  the  thing  proved  to  be  a  much  damaged 
spinet  of  London  make!  It  was  not  exactly  what  I  had 
expected,  and  I  went  on  my  way  rather  crestfallen.  I  need 
not  describe  other  the  like  adventures  and  disappointments 
in  detail.  One  day  was  as  little  fruitful  as  another.  I 
pursued  false  scents  and  found  nothing ;  or  what  I  found 
was  absurdly  different  from  what  I  wanted. 

The  hunt,  however,  was  very  amusing.  There  was  talk 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  and  women — farmers, 
priests,  road-menders,  labourers,  carriers,  and  what  not.  I 
slept  in  curious  places ;  the  scenery  everywhere  was  lovely. 
Most  beautiful  of  all  was  an  evening  spent  at  Erba,  where 
I  dined  on  a  terrace  commanding  a  most  glorious  view  over 
all  the  Brianza,  flooded  with  the  blue  shadows  that  drown 
it  at  sunset,  when  the  hilltops  are  golden  and  all  the  sky 
aflame. 

At  last,  however,  I  met  with  a  very  intelligent  person, 
who  seemed  to  understand  exactly  what  I  was  after. 

Would  you  like  to  find  an  old  sculptured  figure  ? "  he 
asked,  "because  I  think  I  can  tell  you  where  to  look  for 
one  which  is  really  very  precious  and  beautiful.  It  belongs 
to  some  people  at  the  village  of  Bami,  whom  you  will  easily 
find  if  you  care  to  walk  there." 

I  had  been  at  Barni  and  found  nothing,  but  then,  no 
doubt,  I  had  missed  these  people.    I  did  not  want  to  go 


A  TREASURE  REPORTED  51 


back  on  a  wild-goose  chase ;  so  I  made  very  careful 
enquiries.  " What  kind  of  a  figure  was  it?"  I  enquired. 
"  Male  or  female  ?    And  how  big  ?  " 

"  Oh,  it  was  the  figure  of  a  man  about  one  metre  high 
and  finely  made.  It  was  very  old,  very,  very  old ;  as  old 
as  the  figures  you  can  see  all  over  the  Cathedral  at  Milan, 
and  as  fine  as  any  of  them." 

"  Was  it  a  marble  figure,"  I  asked,  "  or  one  of  commoner 
stone,  or,  perhaps,  terra-cotta  ?  " 

"  It  was  surely  marble,  very  beautiful  marble,  and  there 
was  some  colour  on  it,  but  not  much.  Perhaps  it  was  once 
coloured  all  over,  but  now  there  is  only  colour  on  some 
parts — the  hair,  I  think,  and,  perhaps,  the  clothes,  but  that 
I  don't  rightly  remember." 

"  How  did  the  owners  of  it  get  it  ?  Did  it  come  from  a 
church  or  did  it  belong  to  their  house  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  how  they  got  it.  I  only  know  that  they 
and  their  forefathers  have  owned  it  as  long  as  anyone 
remembers.  People  have  wanted  to  buy  it,  but  they 
would  not  part  with  it.  But  now  the  old  man  is  dead, 
and  the  children  sell  it  so  as  to  divide  the  price  between 
them." 

Accordingly  I  set  off  and  walked  back  to  the  village  of 
Bami,  and  the  people  sought  were  soon  found.  Yes !  They 
had  a  beautiful  figure  for  sale,  very  old,  and  sculptured  in 
stone,  a  thing  of  great  value.  Sad  were  they  to  have  to 
part  with  it,  but  there  was  no  help  for  it.  People  had 
offered  good  prices  for  it,  but  not  what  it  was  worth,  and 
I  might  have  it  if  I  paid  what  they  were  asking. 

Could  I  see  the  figure?  Alas,  no!  It  was  no  longer  in 
their  house.  Up  till  yesterday  it  had  been,  but  then  they 
had  sent  it  away  to  their  relative  at  Bellaggio.    He  was  a 


52  HERE  AND  THERE  IN  ITALY 


man  of  .  influence  and  position,  sacristan  and  bell-ringer  at 
the  parish  church  there.  He  would  have  no  difficulty  in 
getting  a  good  price  for  it  from  the  foreign  visitors  there. 
Perhaps  he  had  already  sold  it. 

This  talk  took  place  beside  a  fountain  where  the  water 
gushed  out  from  a  pipe  protruding  from  a  roughly  carved 
sandstone  head  intended  to  represent  Victor  Emmanuel — 
a  type  of  fountain-head  common  in  these  parts.  The  even- 
ing was  coming  on,  and  the  shadows  were  creeping  down 
the  hills ;  the  water  plashed  musically  into  the  great  stone 
trough  where  the  village  girls  had  been  washing  their  linen, 
which  was  now  spread  to  dry.  By  this  time  I  was  fairly 
determined  to  run  the  elusive  sculpture  to  earth,  so  I  de- 
cided, without  hesitation,  to  go  back  to  Bellaggio,  and  hunt 
up  the  "  man  of  influence  and  position." 

It  was  the  following  day  before  I  reached  Bellaggio 
Church  and  enquired  for  the  sacristan.  He  was  not  forth- 
coming. He  had  gone  away  for  the  day  on  business  of 
importance.  My  heart  sank  within  me.  What  other  busi- 
ness could  he  have  but  to  dispose  of  the  statue  ?  Did  they 
know  whether  he  had  a  statue  to  sell,  or  whether  he  had 
taken  it  away  with  him  ?  Oh,  yes,  he  had  a  statue  to  sell, 
a  fine  old  statue !  It  was  brought  to  him  from  the  country 
only  the  day  before.  But  he  had  not  taken  it  away  with 
him.  He  had  caused  it  to  be  carried  up  into  a  chamber 
in  the  church  tower,  and  there  he  had  locked  it  in.  When 
he  went  away  he  took  the  key  with  him,  and  till  he  re- 
turned no  one  could  enter.  But  he  would  be  back  to- 
morrow and  then  I  could  see  it.  Till  to-morrow  I  should 
have  to  wait.  I  asked  what  the  statue  was  like,  but  no 
one  could  describe  it.  All  they  knew  was  that  it  was  very 
old,  very  beautiful,  and  very  precious,  worth  perhaps  hun- 


VICTOR  EMMANUEL 


53 


dreds  of  francs.  If  I  chose  to  wait  I  should  see  it,  and 
could  judge  for  myself. 

Next  day  I  was  early  on  hand  in  a  regular  fever  of 
impatience,  which  I  did  my  best  to  hide.  The  sacristan 
was  forthcoming,  and  the  key.  We  entered  the  tower  and 
mounted  what  seemed  interminable  steps.  The  old  fellow 
was  very  garrulous,  and  full  of  praise  of  his  treasure,  but  I 
paid  little  attention  to  him,  as  in  a  moment  I  should  be  able 
to  see  for  myself.  We  came  to  the  door  of  the  bell-chamber, 
and  the  lock  would  not  open.  The  key  was  tried  one  way 
and  another.  Much  kicking  and  banging  followed.  They 
were  just  going  to  send  for  a  locksmith  when  the  door 
gave  way,  and  we  entered  a  pitch-dark  place.  I  could 
dimly  discern  something  standing  upright  in  the  far  corner. 
As  I  was  making  my  way  toward  it,  the  shutters  opened, 
and  a  burst  of  sunlight  illumined  the  vast  moustache  of 
another  figure  of  Victor  Emmanuel,  if  anything  worse  than 
the  fountain-head  of  Barni !  "  Is  this  your  wonderful 
statue?  "  I  cried.  "  Certainly,  that  is  it.  Is  it  not  beautiful ? 
It  is  very,  very  old !  "  That  was  the  end  of  my  attempts 
to  go  behind  the  little  dealers  and  discover  Old  Masters 
for  myself  in  North  Italian  villages. 

With  much  humility  I  made  my  way  by  boat  over  to 
Cadenabbia,  and  comforted  myself  by  purchasing  on  the 
quay  a  quantity  of  excellent  wrought-iron  work,  and  a 
delightful  sculptured  and  painted  wooden  group  of  St. 
Anne  with  the  Virgin  and  Child,  by  an  Augsburg  artist, 
all  for  150  francs.  The  iron  candelabra  would  be  worth 
more  than  that  now.  The  dealer  had  a  ton  or  so  of  good 
old  wrought-iron  strewn  about  him,  but  it  seemed  then  so 
common  that  it  was  impossible  to  believe  how  soon  such 
stuff  would  become  difficult  to  find,  and  I  had  little  use 


54  HERE  AND  THERE  IN  ITALY 


for  it    The  train  carried  me  off  to  Brescia,  and  into  the 
•  arms  of  Luigi  FeHsina  once  more.    Whither  he  led  me 

I  no  longer  remember,  save  that  we  paid  an  early  visit  to 
Nobile  Mignani.  By  some  obscure  route  word  had  reached 
him  that  the  picture  he  formerly  sold  me  was  a  good  one, 
and  that  he  might  have  asked  for  it  a  larger  price  than  I 
had  paid.  In  consequence,  all  his  prices  had  gone  up  to 
absurd  figures,  but  as  he  had  nothing  I  would  have  carried 
away  if  he  had  given  it  to  me,  this  was  not  of  any  conse- 
quence. One  thing  was  evident  enough,  however,  all  over 
Brescia,  the  general  run  of  prices  for  everything  old  had 
everywhere  increased.  There  were  no  more  ten-franc  Old 
Masters,  however  bad.  Still,  I  was  able  to  make  one  or  two 
acquisitions,  and  to  see  interesting  works  which  were  on 
sale,  but  beyond  my  range.  There  was  a  whole  collection 
of  paintings,  some  of  them  valuable,  in  the  Casa  Carlini, 
and  I  greatly  coveted  a  brilliant  fragment  of  Romanino 
fresco  which  they  would  only  part  with  if  I  purchased  also 
some  more  costly  work. 

After  one  or  two  more  false  starts,  Luigi  took  me  to  a 
studio  where,  to  my  astonishment,  I  saw  what  looked  like 
three  of  the  finest  heads  from  Mr.  Henry  Willett's  series 
of  decorative  portraits,  and  indeed  it  immediately  appeared 
4r  that  they  actually  did  belong  to  the  same  series.*  They 
were  originally  painted  as  a  frieze,  and  used  to  decorate  a 
room  in  the  Gonzaga  Castle  of  San  Martino  di  Gusnaja  be- 
tween Mantua  and  Brescia.  The  panels  purchased  by  Mr. 
Willett  were  forty-four  in  number,  and  they  "formed  a 
frieze  on  two  opposite  walls,  and  on  each  side  of  the  deep 

*  Eighteen  of  them  were  published  in  the  Burlington  Magazine^  of 
November,  1905,  of  which  nine  are  in  the  MetropoHtan  Museum,  New 
York,  and  nine  in  the  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum.  See  also  "^Port- 
foHo,"  1884,  p.  35. 


BRAM ANTING 
17h  X  18  in. 


Facing  p.  54 


BRAMANTINO  HEADS  55 


beam  which  cuts  across  the  centre  of  the  room  parallel  with 
the  other  panels."  All  these  "were  entirely  concealed  by 
the  numerous  coats  of  paint  applied  over  them  by  succes- 
sive tenants  of  the  building."  It  was  only  by  an  accident 
that  the  existence  of  paintings  in  that  position  was  dis- 
covered. The  panels  were  taken  down,  and  Mr.  Willett 
had  the  enterprise  to  buy  them  uncleaned,  with  nothing 
but  a  little  paint  showing  through  here  and  there.  They 
were  skilfully  cleaned  by  Prof.  Church,  and  immediately 
attracted  much  attention.  Again,  to  quote  Mr.  A.  J.  Koop, 
writing  in  the  Burlington  Magazine,  "  By  common  consent 
the  painter  to  whom  the  portraits  are,  ultimately  at  least, 
assigned  is  Bramantino."  The  whole  series  was  evidently 
designed  and  the  best  heads  painted  by  a  first-fate  master 
influenced  by  Foppa,  but  several  of  the  panels  betray  the 
hand  of  assistants. 

It  was  supposed  that  the  forty-four  thus  found  com- 
pleted the  set,  but  two  or  three  years  later  it  was  noticed 
that  there  were  some  more  panels,  whose  existence  had  not 
been  suspected,  at  the  principal  end  of  the  room,  I  beheve 
over  a  fireplace.  Three  panels  were  thus  added  to  the 
series,  and  one  of  these  proved  to  be  in  faultless  preserva- 
tion, and  I  had  the  luck  to  capture  it.  The  other  two  re- 
quired considerable  repainting,  and  ultimately  went,  I 
believe,  to  Germany.  Mr,  Koop  is  in  error  in  supposing 
that  my  panel  was  one  of  the  original  forty-four ;  neither 
was  he  aware  of  the  other  two.  The  total  number  now 
existing  is  forty-seven,  and  they  are  widely  scattered.  Mine 
occupied  the  central  position  at  the  most  important  end  of 
the  room,  and  appears  to  me,  and  to  others  who  carefully 
studied  the  rest  when  they  were  all  together,  to  be  the  best 
of  the  whole  set. 


S6  HERE  AND  THERE  IN  ITALY 


"  Mr.  P.  G.  Konody,"  continues  Mr.  Koop  in  the  article 
.referred  to,  "  has  recently  put  forward*  an  ingenious  theory, 
which,  if  proved  true,  would  greatly  enhance  the  value  of 
these  paintings,  at  any  rate,  in  the  eyes  of  those  to  whom 
a  great  name,  attached  with  more  or  less  justification  to  an 
art  object,  is  a  fetish.  It  is  to  the  effect  that,  though  owing 
their  origin  to  a  set  of  paintings  in  fresco  by  Bramantino, 
our  panels  are  not  by  his  hand,  but  are  the  actual  copies 
mentioned  by  Vasari  t  (in  the  Life  of  Piero  della 
Francesca)  as  having  been  prepared  just  before  the  de- 
struction of  the  original  pictures.  These  copies,  says 
Vasari,  were  made  for  Raphael  by  one  of  his  pupils  "  to  the 
end  that  he  might  possess  the  likeness  of  the  persons  repre- 
sented ;  for  these  were  all  great  personages."  Curiously 
enough,  these  original  portraits,  which  are  thus  en  fas s ant 
referred  to  in  Vasari's  Life  of  Piero  della  Francesca,  are 
completely  ignored  by  the  author  in  his  short  but  com- 
prehensive sketch  of  Bramantino,  while  of  the  copies,  which 
after  Raphael's  death  were  presented  by  his  heir,  Giulio 
Romano,  to  Paolo  Giovio,  no  further  trace  has  hitherto  been 
found.  Now,  seeing  that  Giovio  stood  for  many  years  in 
the  position  of  friend  and  adviser  to  that  insatiable  art 
collector,  Isabella  d'Este,  what  more  probable  than  that  the 
copies  were  transferred  to  the  Duchess's  collection,  and  are 
in  actual  fact  these  very  panels  from  the  Gonzaga  Castle  ? 
The  probability  is  further  strengthened,  as  Mr.  Konody 
points  out,  by  the  absence  of  any  Gonzaga  portrait  among 
the  series,  and  by  the  fact  that  these  are  in  tempera  on 
wood,  as  might  be  expected  in  copies  from  what  were  doubt- 
less frescoes.  .  .  .  Whatever  conclusion  may  be  finally 

*  New  York  Herald,  Paris  edition,  Aug.  28th,  1905. 
t  Vite,  ed.  Milanesi,  11.,  p.  492. 


SOLARIO 
22  X  17  in. 


Facing  p.  57 


SOLARIO 


s; 


arrived  at  as  regards  the  artist  responsible  for  the  portraits, 
or  the  persons  represented,  all  will  agree  as  to  the  super- 
excellent  merits  of  the  paintings  fer  se.  Such  grace  and 
refinement,  such  delicately  restrained  characterisation,  are 
found  only  in  the  great  masters  of  the  period." 

It  presently  appeared,  after  we  had  left  the  studio  with 
the  newly  acquired  picture,  that  Luigi  had  kept  what  he 
considered  to  be  his  bonne  bouche  till  the  last.  This  proved 
to  be  a  panel  painting  of  "  Christ  Crowned  with  Thorns," 
by  Solario — a  picture  brilliant  in  colour,  and  perfect  in  pre- 
servation, besides  being  an  important  example  of  a  rather 
rare  artist.  I  would,  of  course,  have  preferred  to  drop  upon 
a  portrait  by  him,  but  hunters  cannot  often  be  choosers ; 
they  have  to  follow  whatever  scent  they  happen  to  strike, 
hoping  always  that  it  may  lead  them  to  some  record  trophy. 
The  subject  of  my  picture  was  painted  by  Solario  more 
than  once.  There  is  the  well-known  and  highly  finished 
example  in  the  Poldi  Pezzoli  collection  at  Milan,  an  early 
work,  in  which,  as  likewise  in  his  landscape  backgrounds, 
he  comes  closer  to  the  effect  aimed  at  by  fifteenth-century 
Flemish  artists  than  he  does  in  his  later  pictures.  The 
central  figure  from  my  picture  was  several  times  repeated, 
either  by  the  artist  himself  or  in  his  studio.  Such  repeti- 
tions are  in  the  Liitzschena  Gallery,  and  in  the  collection 
of  Mr.  J.  G.  Johnson  at  Philadelphia.  Another  example 
was  for  sale  in  London  about  1891.  Besides  these  there 
are  versions  in  the  Crespi  Gallery  at  Milan,  and  one  with- 
out arms  in  the  Bergamo  Gallery.  A  good  copy  was  sold 
in  the  de  Somzee  sale,  and  there  is  one  signed  by  Simon 
de  Chalons,  and  dated  1 543  in  the  Borghese  Gallery. 

Our  picture  had  a  wretched  gaudy  frame,  but  fate  was 
keeping  a  real  beauty  in  reserve  for  it.    We  only  found 


58  HERE  AND  THERE  IN  ITALY 


that,  however,  a  good  many  years  later,  when  motoring 
about  in  France.  It  happened  that  we  stopped  for  a  night 
in  Avignon.  Though  the  hour  was  late  and  twilight  already 
coming  on,  I  plunged  into  the  dark  recesses  of  an  antiquity 
shop,  kept  by  a  merry  old  lady,  who  followed  me  about 
with  a  candle.  I  was  not  long  in  noticing  the  frame,  and 
its  excellent  carving.  A  rococo  addition  had  been  fixed 
on  the  top,  and  a  mirror  had  replaced  the  picture  it  originally 
contained.  I  said,  "  That  will  just  fit  our  Solario."  It  was 
a  lucky  guess,  because,  when  we  had  brought  it  home  we 
found  it  to  fit  with  the  most  perfect  accuracy.  In  the  same 
shop  was  one  of  those  large  leather-covered,  brass-nail- 
studded,  round-topped  trunks,  so  popular  with  wealthy 
travellers  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  We 
had  recently  been  at  Grignan,  and  had  mentioned  our  visit 
to  the  old  lady.  "  Then  you  must  certainly  buy  Madame 
de  Sevigne's  trunk,"  said  she,  and  buy  it  we  did ;  not  that 
I  have  any  reason  to  suppose  that  it  had  anything  to  do 
with  Madame  de  Sevigne,  beyond  existing  in  her  lifetime, 
but  because  it  was  a  fine  example  of  its  kind,  in  good  con- 
dition, and  the  nail-heads  are  arranged  in  a  pretty  pattern 
of  lilies  and  stars. 

Here  will,  perhaps,  be  the  best  place  to  include  a  very 
beautiful  little  panel  which  I  picked  up  at  Lausanne  one 
year  on  my  way  back  to  England  from  the  Alps.  It  has 
often  been  exhibited,  and  has  caused  the  critics  more  than 
enough  trouble,  whilst  no  two  of  them,  so  far  as  I  know, 
have  yet  agreed  upon  a  name  for  the  painter  of  it.  Venturi 
assigned  it  to  Gian  Francesco  de  Maineri,  painter  and 
miniaturist  of  Parma.  Others  have  suggested  some  un- 
known Romagna  artist  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Cotignola. 
To  me  (though  no  one  agrees  with  me)  it  seems  the  kind 


Painter  unrecognised 

ni  X  in. 


AN  UNSOLVED  PROBLEM 


59 


of  work  that  Lorenzo  Costa  might  have  painted  in  his 
youth.  Whoever  the  artist  may  have  been,  he  certainly 
produced  a  very  charming  Httle  picture,  in  which  I  can  find 
no  trace  of  the  feeling  of  a  miniaturist,  but  rather  of  a  man 
who  designed  as  though  he  were  accustomed  to  paint  large 
altar-pieces  with  life-size  figures.  The  Virgin  is  seated  on 
an  elevated  and  elaborate  marble  throne,  sculptured  and 
inlaid,  the  kind  of  throne  beloved  by  Ferrarese  and  Bologna 
painters.  The  child  stands  erect  upon  her  knee.  A  beauti- 
ful carpet  with  a  gold  ground  is  under  her  feet,  the  kind  of 
carpet  that  would  make  a  sensation  in  a  New  York  auction- 
room  if  it  could  now  be  forthcoming ;  but  the  like  of  it,  I 
believe,  nowhere  exists.  On  either  hand  in  front  stands 
one  of  the  brother  physician  saints,  Cosmas  and  Damian,  in 
rich  red  robes.  There  is  a  fine  dais  overhead,  and  a  pair 
of  floating  cherubs,  and  in  the  lacustrine  landscape  back- 
ground, before  queer-shaped  hills,  are  St.  Eustace  and  the 
magic  stag  on  one  side,  and  St.  George  overcoming  the 
dragon  on  the  other.  Nor  must  I  forget  to  mention  the 
two  peacocks  that  stand  on  the  shoulders  of  the  Virgin*s 
throne.  The  composition  retains  much  of  the  architectural 
symmetry  of  an  earlier  day,  and  combines  it  with  the  re- 
serve and  plain  good  faith  of  those  religious  painters  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  whom  their  religion  served  and  fitted  as 
his  armour  a  knight.  But  there  is  superadded  to  all  this  a 
charm  of  colour,  a  grace  of  design,  and  a  sense  of  decora- 
tion which  endow  the  whole  with  a  singular  power  to  please, 
so  that  almost  everyone  that  looks  at  it  takes  pleasure  in 
it,  whether  they  already  possess  a  liking  for  Old  Masters 
or  not. 

And  yet,  when  we  look  at  this  picture,  there  is  a  drop 
of  bitter  in  our  cup  of  sweetness ;  for  along  with  it  in  the 


6o  HERE  AND  THERE  IN  ITALY 


same  house  there  hung  a  small  profile  portrait  of  a  man, 
painted,  as  I  then  believed,  by  the  same  artist.  It  was 
really  a  charming  little  panel,  and  we  wanted  it  sorely.  We 
thought,  however,  that  we  were  extravagant  in  buying  the 
Madonna,  and  contented  ourselves  with  that,  feeling  com- 
fortably virtuous  in  the  sense  of  abnegation  wherewith  we 
left  the  other.  It  was  a  foolish  and  costly  economy,  because 
the  portrait  would  be  invaluable  now,  not  merely  as  a  pre- 
cious thing  in  itself,  but  as  throwing  light^on  the  authorship 
of  both.  I  have  never  been  able  to  discover  what  happened 
to  it.  It  has  not  found  its  way  into  any  collection  known 
to  me,  nor  has  it  appeared  in  the  sale-room.  Perhaps  it  still 
lingers  unregarded  in  some  Lausanne  house.  When  it  re- 
appears, it  will  be  far  too  costly  for  us  to  buy.  Five  hun- 
dred francs  was  all  they  then  asked  for  it.  Alas,  for  the 
neglected  opportunities  of  the  old  days ! 


CHAPTER  VL 


THE   HUNT   IN  EGYPT 

IF  nowhere  but  in  Italy  were  any  hunting-ground  for  old 
works  of  art  it  would  be  joy  enough,  had  the  supply  of 
d-esirable  finds  not  run  so  short.  The  world^  however, 
is  wide,  and  a  catholic  collector  has  ground  for  hope  every- 
where. Best  of  all  ancient  countries  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago  was  Egypt.  That  was  before  its  soil  had  been  so 
methodically  ransacked  by  expeditions  of  all  nations,  and 
before  the  fellaheen  had  been  brought  to  understand  that 
they  excavated  at  their  peril.  Of  course,  the  sebak  diggers 
and  poachers  will  always  be  making  finds  so  long  as  there 
are  any  old  mounds  to  dig  into ;  but  the  days  when  a  royal 
tomb  of  the  eighteenth  dynasty  could  be  discovered  and 
secretly  looted  for  a  series  of  seasons  are  fortunately  gone 
for  ever.  Science  gains  if  the  amateur  collector  loses,  and 
the  attainment  of  accurate  knowledge  of  the  past  is  incom- 
parably more  important  than  any  other  consideration,  even 
to  the  most  inveterate  of  collectors  himself. 

Now  that  shiploads  of  luxurious  tourists  annually  hasten 
to  Egypt  to  escape  a  Northern  winter,  and  find  amusement 
in  the  ordinary  round  of  entertainments  which  is  provided 
everywhere  on  the  same  pattern  for  modern  wealthy  idlers, 
a  good  deal  of  the  glamour  of  the  East  has  departed  from 
Cairo.  Yet  even  now  some  may  escape  a  sense  of  that 
loss,  by  not  having  been  born  too  soon. 


62 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


Who  that  has  revelled  in  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  in  his 
childhcK)d  can  fail  to  feel  a  thrill  at  his  first  contact  with  the 
old  romantic  world  of  Islam  ?  I  have  not  seen  Cairo  since 
that  first  visit,  and  I  do  not  hunger  to  go  there  now.  The 
Cairo  that  I  remember  was  still  distinctly  reminiscent  of  the 
old  great  days.  Its  streets  were  peopled  as  with  the  ancient 
folk.  It  was  a  city  of  camels  and  donkeys,  of  bright  cos- 
tumes and  loud  shouting.  "  Oah  shemaluk !  Oah  yeminuk ! 
Yallah !  yallah !  "* — the  very  words  call  up  still  fresh 
memories  of  its  thronged  highways,  the  hurry  of  men  and 
beasts,  and  the  glamour  of  dust  made  golden  by  the  sun. 
When  Islam  is,  if  ever,  harnessed  into  the  shafts  of  the 
modem  industrial  world,  and  all  its  hands  are  fettered  to 
machinery,  the  last  great  pool  of  romance  will  be  drained 
and  "  common  day  "  will  reign  the  whole  world  round.  The 
first  evening  in  Cairo,  the  first  distant  view  of  the  pyramids, 
now  at  last  actually  beheld,  the  first  plunge  into  the  bazaars, 
the  almost  incredible  emotion  that  came  with  the  first  cup 
of  coffee  from  a  native  stall — these  are  some  of  the  unfor- 
gettable treasures,  possessions  for  ever  that  go  to  build  up 
what  for  each  of  us  is  the  real  thing  that  he  calls  his  life. 

Someone  must  have  quickly  marked  me  down  as  a  greedy 
collector,  seeing  me,  I  suppose,  grubbing  in  the  bazaars  and 
following  me  home,  for,  late  in  one  of  the  first  evenings 
after  our  arrival^  I  was  told  that  two  natives  were  enquiring 
for  me.  They  entered  my  room  like  conspirators,  bringing 
an  air  of  mystery  with  them.  After  seeming  to  assure 
themselves  that  they  were  not  overlooked,  one  of  them  drew 
a  small  packet  from  his  bosom  and  placed  in  my  hands  a 

*  "To  the  right!  To  the  left !  Get  on!"  Heaven  and  the  pro- 
fessors of  Arabic  know  how  these  words  should  be  spelt.  I  merely  put 
down  the  memory  of  their  sound,  having  no  accessible  expert  to  set  me 
right. 


A  KORAN  MANUSCRIPT 


63 


most  beautiful  little  manuscript  of  the  Koran.  It  was  fif- 
teenth-<:entury  work,  still  in  its  original  binding,  and  I  think 
they  intended  me  to  believe  that  it  had  been  stolen,  as  was 
probably  the  fact.  It  was  the  first  time  I  had  had  dealings 
with  an  Oriental.  Would  that  that  lost  opportunity  might 
return !  but  such  a  chance  will  never  again  be  mine. 

"  What  will  you  give  us  for  this  ?  they  demanded.  "  We 
must  sell  it  quickly,  and  you  can  have  it  cheap." 

I  bade  them  name  their  price,  but  they  hung  back. 

"  Tell  us  what  you  will  pay ;  it  is  worth  much  more  money 
than  we  can  wait  to  get.  Buy  it  from  us,  and  you  shall 
have  it  cheap." 

"  No !  "  I  replied.  "  I  can't  be  buyer  and  seller  too. 
Name  your  price,  and  if  I  can  afford  it  I  will  buy.  But  I  am 
sure  this  thing  is  too  expensive  for  me." 

"  A  price,  a  price !  "  they  cried.  "  Name  a  price  that 
you  will  pay,  and  let  us  see." 

But  I  would  not,  thinking  that  they  would  only  laugh 
if  I  did ;  so  at  last  they  suggested  eighty  pounds. 

"  That  is  truly  very  cheap,"  I  said,  "  and  the  book  is 
worth  much  more ;  but  I  have  not  eighty  pounds  to  spare, 
as  I  want  to  buy  ancient  Egyptian  things,  so  you  must  find 
another  purchaser." 

"  We  will  take  less.  Tell  us  what  you  will  pay.  Name 
any  sum." 

But  I  foolishly  would  not.  Five  pounds  was  in  the  back 
of  my  mind,  and  I  was  ashamed  to  utter  the  words.  I 
refused  to  deal,  and  sent  them  away  still  urging,  and  finally 
whining  out  the  words,  "  Name  a  price ;  name  any  price, 
however  small."  If  I  had  said  five  pounds,  I  now  know 
that  they  would  have  jumped  at  the  money,  and  that  won- 
derful book  would  have  been  mine;  but  through  shame- 


64  THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


facedness  at  a  first  contact  with  these  new  folk  I  lost  a 
golden  opportunity. 

An  old-time  Damascus  dealer  once  gave  to  a  friend  of 
mine  the  following  simple  explanation  as  to  how  he  came 
to  sell  to  him  for  two  pounds  an  object  for  which  he  had 
begun  by  asking  a  hundred.  "  These  things,"  he  said,  "  are 
worth  to  us — nothing.  To  you  they  are  worth  various  sums 
of  money.  How  are  we  to  know  what  they  are  worth 
to  you?  The  price  you  will  pay  seems  to  us  to  dei>end, 
not  on  the  things,  but  on  the  persons  who  buy  them.  You 
say  this  thing  is  worth  two  pounds  to  you.  It  might  be 
worth  two  hundred  to  someone  else.  How  are  we  to  tell 
what  it  will  fetch  except  by  trying  ? "  That  was  the 
happy-go-lucky  method  of  the  good  old  days. 

A  few  days  later,  returning  on  the  back  of  a  great  white 
hired  ass,  "Lily  Tantry"  by  name,  I  was  rapidly  passing 
the  little  stall  of  a  working  tailor.  He  was  an  aged  and 
hairy  man,  and  he  sat  on  a  divan  that  filled  the  front  of  his 
cupboard-hke  shop.  A  curious  little  chest  in  the  shadow 
behind'  him  caught  my  eye,  so  that  as  soon  as  I  could  arrest 
the  ass  I  returned  and  entered  into  conversation  with  him. 

"  What  is  that  chest  behind  you,  O  Father  of  Beards  ?  "  I 
asked. 

"  In  the  name  of  Allah !  it  is  a  chest  that  belonged  to  my 
father,  on  whom  is  peace,  and  to  his  father  before  him,  how 
far  back  I  know  not.  I  keep  my  threads  and  needles  in  it, 
but  it  is  old  and  crazy.  If  you  want  it,  and  will  give  me 
wherewith  to  buy  a  new  and  better  one,  you  shall  have  it, 
and  your  donkey-boy  can  now  carry  it  away." 

Said  and  done  it  all  was  in  a  few  moments,  and  we 
parted,  both  rejoicing;  only  the  donkey-boy  grieved,  but 
he  had  not  very  far  to  carry  it.    We  were  presently  jammed 


BUYING  CARPETS 


65 


in  the  confusion  of  a  wedding  procession,  and  I  noticed 
that  the  box  gave  rise  to  some  comment,  as  it  was  recog- 
nised by  the  neighbours,  who  seemed  to  be  congratulating 
the  tailor  on  having  disposed  of  his  old  rubbish  to  an  infidel, 
doubtless  at  a  high  price.    The  box  still  stands  on  my 
writing-table,  and  holds  the  tools  of   my  craft — pens, 
pencils,  and  the  like — ^instead.  of  the  tailor's.    I  have  never 
seen  another  at  all  like  it,  nor  have  I  any  idea  of  its  age. 
It  is  a  solid  construction  of  brown-toned  wood,  inlaid  with 
black  wood,  bone,  and  mother-of-pearl,  and  with  bone 
colonettes  at  the  angles.    Whatever  its  age  may  be,  the 
decoration  preserves  a  very  ancient  tradition,  the  front  pre- 
senting the  form  of  an  arcading  of  four  round  arches, 
roughly  resembhng  the  fagade  of  a  Sassanian  palace.  On 
the  top  is  a  rosette  between  two  formalised  trees,  and  the 
back  is  similar.    The  workmanship  is  very  rough,  but 
highly  effective,  and  the  whole  possesses  an  admirably 
decorative  quality. 

Besides  this  box  we  only  bought  stuffs  and  carpets  in 
Cairo,  and  the  buying  of  Oriental  carpets  is  the  same  all 
the  world  over,  or,  at  least,  all  over  the  Eastern  world. 
Nothing  is  more  entertaining.  You  are  seated  beside  an 
empty  floor,  drinking  coffee  and  smoking  cigarettes,  while 
carpet  after  carpet  is  unrolled  or  unfolded  and  strewn 
around ;  they  gradually  fill  the  whole  place  and  pile  up  one 
upon  another,  while  the  eye  becomes  stimulated  and 
finally  satiated  with  the  glory  of  colour,  and  one's  own  little 
heap  of  acquisitions  slowly  piles  up.  I  have  sought  for 
carpets  in  Cairo  and  Smyrna,  in  Beyrut  and  Lahore,  in 
Srinagar  and  Armritsur.  I  have  had  them  unladen  from 
the  backs  of  great  Bactrian  camels  newly  arrived  at 
Peshawar  from  Merv  and  Penjdeh.  I  have  bargained  for 
E 


66  the!  hunt  in  EGYPT 


them  with  dealers  in  camp  in  Ladakh,  on  the  Yarkand  road, 
carrying  them  down  into  India  from  Kashgar,  Khotan, 
and  yet  further  East.  I  have  even  purchased  from  a  Cen- 
tral Asian  pilgrim  en  route  for  Mecca  the  carpet  on  which 
he  had  just  been  saying  his  evening  prayer.  They  are  all 
things  of  romance.  They  seem  to  have  come,  as  it  were, 
on  the  wings  of  the  morning  from  the  land  of  dreams. 
Fairy  fingers  have  woven  them  in  a  world  of  colour  and 
happiness,  where  nothing  is  done  by  rule  or  law,  but  the 
whim  of  the  moment  alone  is  guide,  and  whatever  is  done 
is  right,  because  right  feeling  has  willed  it  so. 

The  rubbish  heaps  of  old  Cairo  in  those  days  were 
strewn  all  over  with  broken  fragments  of  pots  and  tiles. 
These  blue  and  green  pieces  with  their  glazed  surfaces  glit- 
tered in  the  sunlight  amid  the  sand  like  bright  stars.  A 
few  alert  persons  had  already  begun  to  pay  attention  to 
them,  and  were  wont  to  go  out  a-hunting,  especially  after 
rain,  in  search  for  rare  fragments  of  fine  quality.  Some 
very  valuable  collections  were  thus  made  which  found  their 
way  ultimately  into  museums,  and  gave  useful  indications 
as  to  the  place  and  time  of  manufacture  of  certain  well- 
known  types  of  fabric.  The  hunt  was  quite  exciting,  and 
I  went  forth  to  essay  it,  but  where  experienced  local  col- 
lectors only  cared  to  pick  up  specimens  of  decorated  ware, 
any  coloured  fragment  was  good  enough  for  me.  I  took 
with  me  a  spare  donkey  and  a  sack,  and  brought  home  a 
small  load  at  a  time,  thus  ultimately  securing  two  or  three 
hundredweight  of  fragments  of  all  kinds  and  sizes,  pre- 
dominantly blue  in  colour,  but  of  varying  intensities.  The 
sacks  returned  with  me  to  England,  and  remained  unused 
for  twenty  years,  but  at  last  an  opportunity  arrived  for 
their  very  effective  employment.    It  was  when  I  was 


CAIRO  RUBBISH  HEAPS  67 


engaged  in  the  repair  of  Allington  Castle  for  rehabitation. 
There  was  a  niche  in  a  wall  in  one  of  the  rooms.  It  had 
once  been  a  window,  but  was  closed  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury. I  lined  this  niche  with  a  mosaic  made  of  the  blue 
Cairo  pot-fragments,  and  fixed  a  fifteenth-century  Flemish 
statue  on  a  pedestal  in  the  midst.  The  effect  is  agreeable, 
and  I  do  not  think  that  future  inhabitants  of  the  house  will 
want  to  undo  it.  The  remainder  of  my  pot-fragments 
were  similarly  employed  in  other  suitable  positions,  so  that 
they  were  finally  used  up  to  the  last  square  inch,  and  my 
labours  so  long  before  spent  are  receiving  their  ultimate 
reward. 

But  the  months  of  that  winter  in  Cairo  were  not  mainly 
devoted  to  the  great  hunt.  That  was  a  time  of  terribly 
hard  work,  with  all  the  old  mosques  to  be  carefully  studied 
in  their  chronological  order,  the  museums  to  be  learned  by 
heart,  and  in  the  evening  the  mysteries  of  hieroglyphics  to 
be  laboriously  penetrated  and  the  lore  of  the  ancient 
Egyptians  acquired.  At  last  the  day  came  when  we  were 
able  to  go  on  board  our  dahabiyeh  and  sail  away  south- 
wards before  a  favouring  breeze.  The  noise  of  Cairo,  the 
throng  of  its  streets,  the  crying  and  the  going  of  the  folk 
within  it — all  faded  and  vanished  as  we  sailed  away.  A 
great  silence  descended  upon  us  with  the  oncoming  of  the 
night,  and  all  the  striving  and  hurrying  of  recent  weeks 
seemed  suddenly  to  have  belonged  to  another  world  and 
another  life.  The  night  silences  of  the  Nile  are  as  won- 
derful as  Alpine  silences.  Yet,  though  at  first  it  seems  as 
if  sound  itself  were  dead,  the  listening  ear  by  degrees 
begins  to  apprehend  a  fainter  category  of  subdued  voices. 
Distant  sakiehs  buzz  Hke  far-off  swarming  bees,  an  owl 
hoots,  the  dogs  of  some  remote  village  break  forth  into 


68 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


barking,  and  are  answered  by  those  of  another,  yet  more 
faint,  in  a  further  distance.  Then  the  tiny  echoes  of  these 
sounds  are  perceived  coming  from  the  steep  face  of  the 
river-bank,  so  that  presently  what  seemed  the  stillness  of 
death  is  found  to  be  alive  with  all  manner  of  little  tink- 
lings  and  soft  sighs,  gentle  ripplings  of  water,  and  faint 
rustling  of  the  reeds. 

Our  progress  up  the  river  against  unfavourable  breezes, 
and  unaided  by  stecim,  was  almost  incredibly  slow.  It 
took  thirty-seven  days  to  reach  the  First  Cataract.  But 
the  slower  we  went  the  better  we  were  pleased,  and  the 
longer  I  was  able  to  spend  on  shore  at  sites,  some  of  little 
fame,  but  to  me  of  great  interest.  Every  day  brought 
some  grist  to  the  mill — some  new  site  examined,  some 
temple  or  tomb  visited,  some  ancient  object  acquired.  As 
to  these  acquisitions,  there  is,  for  the  most  part,  little  to  tell. 
Things  were  offered  for  sale  on  all  sides  and  by  all  kinds 
of  persons ;  some  were  genuine,  many  were  forgeries,  most 
were  of  little  or  no  interest — damaged  scarabs,  broken 
figurines,  imperfect  pots,  bits  of  inscribed  stone.  Some- 
times we  would  sail  past  an  individual  standing  on  the  bank 
of  the  river  loudly  shouting  and  waving  some  object  in  his 
hand,  for  which  he  desired  rather  than  hoped  to  find  a  pur- 
chaser. Once  it  happened  that  the  wind  entirely  failed  us 
as  we  were  close  in  near  such  an  individual.  He  was  seated 
on  the  bank,  surrounded  by  ancient  pots.  They  were  of 
many  shapes  and  of  more  than  one  fabric,  and  he  had  no 
doubt  recently  dug  them  up  from  tombs  at  the  edge  of  the 
neighbouring  desert,  for  it  was  near  Kasr-es-Saiyad.  One  of 
these  tombs  must  have  belonged  to  a  pre-dynastic  Egyptian, 
for  several  of  the  pots  were  of  the  same  type  as  those  after- 
ward discovered  in  pre-dynastic  cemeteries  which  a  few 


SACRED  CATS 


69 


years  later  were  revealed  to  the  world  by  the  excavations 
of  Flinders  Petrie.  Others  were  of  the  eighteenth 
dynasty.  I  carried  off  a  crate  full  of  them — things  of  little 
value,  notwithstanding  their  great  antiquity,  but  to  me 
ever  since  a  source  of  continual  pleasure,  because  of  their 
fine  simphcity  of  form  and  good  proportions.  Nothing 
decorates  a  library  better  than  a  row  of  such  pots  high  up 
on  the  top  of  bookcases.  In  late  years  thousands  of  these 
common  pots  have  been  smashed  to  pieces  by  excavators, 
who  had  no  use  for  more  than  a  small  proportion  of  those 
they  brought  to  light  in  ancient  burial-places.  The  picture 
of  that  black-robed  Egyptian  seated  so  patiently,  apparently 
miles  away  from  anyone,  on  the  bare  river-bank,  with  his 
ring  of  pots  around  him,  awaiting  the  chance  (that  by  a 
miracle  came  to  him)  of  someone  in  a  boat  stopping  just 
there,  still  lingers  clearly  in  my  memory — 3.  characteristic 
image  of  the  East  putting  its  trust  in  Fate,  and  not  in  vain. 

The  first  at  all  memorable  adventure  of  acquisition  that 
came  to  me  on  the  Nile  happened  in  the  desert  near  Beni- 
Hasan,  on  the  way  to  the  narrow  valley  in  the  side  of  which 
is  carved  out  the  shrine  called  by  Herodotus  the  Speos 
Artemidos.  The  sacred  animal  of  that  temple  and  of  the 
surrounding  district  was  the  cat.  It  is  claimed  for  man 
that  one  of  his  greatest  triumphs  is  the  domestication  of 
that  wildest  of  wild  animals,  the  cat.  The  claim  is  mon- 
strous ;  it  was  the  cat  that  domesticated  man.  Some  wise 
old  tabby  discovered  the  trick.  She  told  her  young,  "  Don't 
run  away  from  him ;  sit  still  and  lick  yourself,  and  treat  him 
with  confidence,  always  keeping  an  eye  on  him,  though  you 
seem  to  be  looking  the  other  way.  He's  a  blundering 
creature,  anyhow.  What  he  throws  never  hits,  and  you 
have  always  time  to  jump  aside  and  get  out  of  his  way  when 


70 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


he  comes  for  you.  But  if  you  treat  him  with  confidence 
and  purr  when  he  touches  you,  he'll  do  you  no  harm,  and 
when  he  is  not  looking  you  can  eat  his  food  and  save  the 
trouble  of  hunting.  Have  you  not  claws  and  teeth  ?  Use 
them  when  finally  necessary,  and  he'll  be  careful.  But,  on 
the  whole,  trust  him,  though  with  discretion,  and  he'll  let 
you  live  on  him."  The  policy  was  entirely  successful.  Man, 
being  tamed,  came  to  think  that  he  had  tamed  the  cat,  and 
was  correspondingly  proud  of  himself.  The  cat  never 
undeceived  him,  and  has  lived  a  life  of  luxurious  ease  ever 
since. 

In  Egypt  the  cat  was  worshipped.  In  early  days  it 
began  by  being  the  totem  of  some  ancient  Egyptian  clan. 
Other  clans  venerated  the  bull,  the  crocodile,  the  hawk,  the 
jackal,  the  cobra,  the  lizard,  and  so  forth.  Observation  of 
existing  totem  tribes  in  Africa,  Australia,  and  elsewhere 
shows  us  that  one  or  more  representatives  of  the  totem  are 
often  fed  or  even  kept  alive  in  captivity  by  the  tribe.  Thus 
Mr.  Frazer  tells  us  that  "  amongst  the  Narrinyeri,  in  South 
Australia,  men  of  the  snake  clan  sometimes  catch  snakes, 
pull  out  their  teeth  or  sew  up  their  mouths,  and  keep  them 
as  pets.  In  a  pigeon  clan  of  Samoa  a  pigeon  was  carefully 
kept  and  fed.  Amongst  the  Kalang  in  Java,  whose  totem 
is  a  red  dog,  each  family,  as  a  rule,  keeps  one  of  these 
animals,  which  they  will,  on  no  account,  allow  to  be  struck 
or  ill-used  by  anyone."  The  Egyptian  cat  clan  treated  cats 
as  the  Kalang  treat  red  dogs. 

At  an  early  date  the  cat  became  a  totem  venerated  all 
along  the  Nile.  So  also  did  the  ibis,  the  hawk,  the  beetle, 
the  asp,  and  other  animals.  Cicero  says  that  no  one  ever 
heard  of  an  Egyptian  killing  a  cat;  the  remark  might  be 
made  at  the  present  day  with  almost  equal  truth.  Herodotus 


CAT  GHOSTS 


relates  that,  when  a  fire  occurred  in  Egypt,  the  people's 
first  idea  was  to  save  the  cats  and  prevent  them  from  leaping 
into  the  flames. 

Not  only  were  cats  preserved  from  injury,  respected,  and 
j>etted  during  life,  but  they  were  buried  with  honour  and 
mourned  when  dead.  Many  a  parallel  may  be  found  to 
this  custom  of  the  ancient  Egyptians.  For  instance,  in 
Samoa,  to  quote  once  more  from  Mr.  Frazer,  "  If  a  man  of 
the  owl  totem  found  a  dead  owl  by  the  roadside,  he  would 
sit  down  and  weep  over  it  and  beat  his  forehead  with  stones 
till  the  blood  flowed.  The  bird  would  then  be  wrapped  up 
and  buried  with  as  much  ceremony  as  if  it  had  been  a 
human  being."  The  Egyptians'  idea  of  respectable  burial 
implied  preliminary  mummification.  According  to  their 
notion,  a  living  man  consisted  of  a  body,  a  ka,  or  ghost,  a 
bay  or  soul,  and  a  "  luminous."  At  death  these  component 
parts  were  broken  asunder  and  set  adrift.  It  was  believed 
that  some  day  all  of  them  would  come  together  again,  and 
there  would  be  a  resurrection.  This,  however,  could  only 
happen  if  all  the  parts  were  preserved.  Some  of  them 
might  be  destroyed  by  the  infernal  powers  ;  that,  of  course, 
could  not  be  prevented  by  surviving  relatives.  They  could 
only  help  to  keep  the  ka  going.  This  ka  was  an  impalpable 
double  of  the  man's  body ;  it  was,  in  fact,  the  mediaeval,  or, 
for  that  matter,  the  modern,  ghost.  To  keep  it  alive  it  had 
to  be  fed  with  the  ghost  of  food,  clothed  in  the  ghost  of 
clothing,  and  housed  in  the  ghost  of  a  house.  It  might  be 
pleased  and  amused  by  the  ghosts  of  luxuries  and  games, 
and  served  by  the  ghosts  of  slaves.  The  ingenuity  of  the 
ancient  Egyptians  may  be  measured  by  the  fact  that  they 
not  only  invented  the  double,  but  found  out  how  to  supply 
it  with  all  these  things. 


72 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


The  ghost,  or  double,  of  a  body  (in  ancient  Egypt)  had, 
however,  to  have  a  material  something  to  be  the  double  of. 
The  actual  body  was,  of  course,  best ;  second  best  was  an 
image  of  it  made  in  some  lasting  substance.  Hence  arose 
mummification  to  preserve  the  body,  and  portrait  sculpture 
to  replace  it  if  destroyed.  Such  statues  are  called  ka 
statues.  If  the  mummy  were  destroyed  the  ka  could  still 
be  kept  in  existence  by  means  of  them.  A  rich  man  was 
mummified  in  costly  style,  had  many  ka  statues,  and  was 
buried  in  an  elaborate  tomb ;  a  poor  man  was  merely  dipped 
in  bitumen,  rolled  in  a  few  yards  of  common  stuff,  and 
hidden  in  the  desert  sand. 

As  with  men,  so  with  cats.  They,  too,  had  their  ka  and 
all  the  rest  of  it,  and  their  ka  had  likewise  to  be  kept  from 
annihilation  against  the  great  day  of  resurrection  of  cats, 
crocodiles,  and  men.  A  rich  man*s  cat  was  elaborately 
mummified,  wound  round  and  round  with  stuff,  and  cun- 
ningly plaited  over  with  linen  ribbons  dyed  two  different 
colours.  His  head  was  encased  in  a  rough  kind  of  papier- 
mache  mask,  and  that  was  covered  with  linen  and  painted, 
even  gilt  sometimes,  the  ears  always  carefully  pricked  up. 
The  mummy  might  be  enclosed  in  a  bronze  box  with  a 
bronze  ka  statue  of  the  cat  seated  on  the  top.  Even  finer 
burial  might  await  a  particularly  grand  cat,  as  we  shall  pre- 
sently see.  A  poor  man's  cat  was  rolled  up  in  a  simple 
lump,  but  the  rolling  was  respectfully  done,  which  is  more 
than  one  can  say  about  many  a  poor  ancient  Egyptian's 
body  brought  to  light  in  these  excavating  days. 

Egypt  possessed  many  temples  of  the  Cat  Goddess. 
First  among  them  was  the  great  temple  of  Bubastis.  It  was 
called  by  Herodotus  the  most  pleasing  of  all  the  temples 
of  Egypt.    A  festival  of  an  exceedingly  merry  and  immoral 


A  CATS^  CEMETERY 


73 


character  was  celebrated  there  to  the  yearly  delight  of 
thousands  of  Egyptians.  Cat  mummies  and  cat  ka  statues 
have  been  found  in  many  parts  of  Egypt,  but  till  recently 
ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  of  them  came  from  Bubastis. 
In  the  summer  of  1888,  however,  an  enormous  find  of  cats 
was  made  near  Beni-Hasan,  a  place  some  hundred  miles  or 
so  south  of  Cairo,  and  well  known  for  its  wonderful  rock- 
cut  tombs.  That  an  important  cats'  burying-place  would 
exist  somewhere  thereabouts  might  have  been  predicted 
from  the  fact  that,  as  aforesaid,  the  famous  Speos  Artemidos 
exists  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood,  and  this  temple 
was  dedicated  to  Pasht.  Cats  must,  therefore,  have  been 
specially  venerated  in  the  ancient  city. 

Fot  three  or  four  thousand  years  the  cat  mummies  of 
Beni-Hasan  lay  undisturbed,  awaiting  the  resurrection ; 
then  a  resurrection  came  to  them,  but  other  than  they  had 
looked  forward  to.  The  archangel  that  heralded  it  was  an 
Egyptian  fellah  from  the  neighbouring  village.  By  some 
chance  one  day  this  genius  dug  a  hole  somewhere  in  the 
level  floor  of  the  desert,  and  struck — cats!  Not  one  or 
two  here  and  there,  but  dozens,  hundreds,  hundreds  of 
thousands,  a  layer  of  them,  a  stratum  thicker  than  many  a 
coal-seam,  in  a  series  of  pits  ten  to  twenty  cats  deep,  mummy 
squeezed  against  mummy,  tight  as  herrings  in  a  barrel.  The 
discovery  meant  wealth  for  somebody.  A  systematic 
exploration  of  the  pits  was  undertaken.  The  surface  sand 
was  stripped  off,  and  the  cats  were  laid  bare.  All  sorts  and 
conditions  of  them  then  appeared — the  commoner  sort 
caked  together  in  black  lumps,  out  of  which  here  a  grin- 
ning face,  there  a  furry  paw,  or  a  backbone  or  row  of  ribs 
of  some  ancient  puss  stood  prominently  forth.  The  better 
cats  and  kittens  emerged  in  astonishing  numbers,  and  with 


74  THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


all  their  wrappings  as  fresh  as  if  they  had  been  put  into  the 
ground  a  week,  and  not  thirty  centuries  before.  Now  and 
again  an  elaborately  plaited  mummy  turned  up ;  still  more 
rarely  one  with  a  gilded  face  (of  such  I  myself  found  three 
lying  about).  As  far  as  I  can  learn,  only  three  cat  ka 
statues  were  found  there.  Two  of  these  are  small  bronze 
figures.  The  third  is  a  life-size  bronze,  a  hollow  casting, 
inside  which  the  actual  cat  was  buried.  One  or  more 
bronze  statuettes  of  Osiris,  god  of  the  dead,  were  likewise 
found  among  the  cats.  All  these  objects  are  in  my 
possession. 

The  plundering  of  the  cemetery  was  a  sight  to  see,  but 
one  had  to  stand  well  to  windward.  The  village  children 
came  from  day  to  day  and  provided  themselves  with  the 
most  attractive  mummies  they  could  find.  These  they 
took  down  to  the  river-bank  to  sell  for  the  smallest  coin  to 
passing  travellers.  Often  they  took  to  playing  or  fighting 
together  with  them  on  the  way,  and  then  the  ancient  fur 
began  to  fly  as  for  three  thousand  years  it  had  never  been 
called  upon  to  do.  The  path  became  strewn  with  mummy 
cloth  and  bits  of  cats'  skulls,  bones,  and  fur  in  horrid  pro- 
fusion, and  the  wind  blew  the  fragments  about  and  carried 
the  stench  afar.  This  was  only  the  illicit  part  of  the  busi- 
ness. The  bulk  of  the  old  totems  went  another  way.  Some 
contractor  came  along  and  offered  so  much  a  pound  for 
their  bones  to  make  into  something — soap  or  tooth  powder, 
I  dare  say,  or  even  paint.  So  men  went  systematically  to 
work,  peeled  cat  after  cat  of  its  wrappings,  stripped  off  the 
brittle  fur,  and  piled  the  bones  in  black  heaps  a  yard  or 
more  high,  looking  from  the  distance  like  rotting  haycocks 
dispersed  over  the  sandy  plain.  The  rags  and  other  refuse, 
it  appears,  make  excellent  manure,  and  donkey-loads  of 


Height  17|  in 

GILT  BRONZE  CAT 
From  Bent  Hasan 


Facing  p.  75 


THE  GREAT  GILT  CAT 


75 


them  were  carried  off  to  the  fields  to  serve  that  useful,  if 
unromantic,  purpwDse. 

I  happened  to  be  riding  by  just  when  some  of  the  dig- 
ging was  toward  ;  while  halting  but  a  few  moments  the  great 
gilt  bronze  cat  was  discovered.  Presumably  the  villagers 
suspected  that  I  might  be  some  official  who  would  be  down 
on  them  for  unauthorised  appropriation  of  antiquities.  At 
all  events,  they  thought  it  better  to  be  on  the  safe  side,  so 
the  cat  was  huddled  up  in  a  rag  and  given  to  a  small  boy, 
who  made  off  with  it.  Seeing  what  had  happened,  I  fol- 
lowed him.  He  began  to  run,  cutting  away  over  the 
desert,  with  me  in  hot  pursuit  on  rather  a  lazy  donkey.  I 
had  neither  whip  nor  spur,  but  only  a  kind  of  Mrs.  Gamp 
umbrella  wherewith  to  belabour  my  steed.  The  thwacks 
were  more  resounding  than  efficient.  However,  I  was 
between  the  boy  and  his  village,  so  that  I  could  drive  him 
towards  the  desert  hills.  The  chase  was  long,  but  the 
scales  of  fate  ultimately  tipped  my  way,  and  as  I  finally 
came  up  with  the  truant  he  cast  himself  on  his  knees  and 
held  up  to  my  deUghted  gaze  the  gilt  bronze  cat.  All  I 
desired  was  to  purchase  it,  so  that  the  boy's  feelings  under- 
went a  swift  and  agreeable  revulsion.  We  returned 
joyously  together,  I  with  the  cat,  he  with  a  handful  of 
piastres. 

The  bronze  cat  sits  bolt  upright  (some  eighteen  and  a 
half  inches  high),  with  her  forelegs  very  straight  and  rigid 
and  her  paws  set  close  together.  Her  neck  is  long,  and 
perfectly  cylindrical.  Her  head  is  practically  a  sphere, 
with  a  face  patched  on  to  the  front.  She  is,  in  fact,  almost 
the  mathematical  abstraction  of  a  cat  reduced  to  its  simplest 
form.  The  inside  of  her  body  is  hollow,  and  in  it  the  cat's 
mummy  was  buried.    Only  the  unmistakable  smell  and  a 


76 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


few  scraps  of  mummy  cloth  remained  behind  when  I  first 
saw  the  creature.  The  whole  thing,  legs  and  all,  was  cast 
in  one  piece,  the  cores  of  clay,  about  which  the  forelegs  are 
cast,  being  still  inside  them.  The  right  leg  has  cracked ; 
moisture  at  some  time  found  its  way  to  the  clay  within, 
which  has  swollen  and  burst  the  whole  limb  wide  open.  An 
interesting  feature  about  this  cat  is  that  the  whole  body  of 
it  was  thinly  plastered  over  with  a  fine  coating  of  gesso^  and 
that  this  was  gilded.*  Alabaster  eyes  were  also  introduced. 
Most  of  the  gilded  gesso  and  one  of  the  eyes  remain.  The 
maker  of  the  cat  did  not  intend  it  to  be  gilt.  This  is 
evident  not  only  because  the  modelling  of  the  face  is 
entirely  altered  by  the  plaster,  which  is  thereabouts  quite 
thick,  but  because  the  whiskers  were  indicated  by  toohng 
about  the  mouth,  and  this  tooling  the  gesso^  before  bits  of 
it  flaked  off,  entirely  hid.  A  cat  buried  with  such  excep- 
tional magnificence  can  have  been  no  ordinary  beast.  It 
seems  hardly  too  much  to  assume  that  it  was  the  temple  cat 
of  its  day,  the  sacred  animal  of  that  Speos  Artemidos  which 
all  travellers  in  Egypt  go  to  see.  As  such,  at  all  events,  the 
owner  finds  pleasure  in  regarding  it. 

The  next  collecting  adventure  I  can  remember  was  a 
wonderful  night  at  Luxor,  a  village  that  in  those  days  was 
a  perfect  hive  of  illicit  antiquity  dealers.  No  doubt  most 
of  the  things  they  sold  called  for  no  secrecy,  but  it  suited 
their  notions  of  how  best  to  impose  on  travellers  to  repre- 
sent every  object  in  their  shops  as  a  priceless  treasure  which 
the  whole  power  of  the  local  government  was  eager  to  seize 

*  There  is  a  fine  upright  figure  of  Osiris  in  bronze  at  Ley  den,  which 
is  plastered  and  gilt  in  a  similar  fashion.  This  method  is  very  ancient. 
Compare  some  gilded,  plastered,  copper  feathers  found  by  Petrie  in 
Pepy's  Temple  at  Abydos  (sixth  dynasty). 


LUXOR  DEALERS 


77 


for  the  glory  of  the  Cairo  Museum.  They  had  plenty  of 
forgeries,  some  almost  perfectly  made.  Best  were  the 
scarabs.  There  must  have  been  a  genius  at  work  pro- 
ducing them.  I  am  told  that  he  was  as  proud  of  his  craft  as 
Bastianini  himself,  and  was  indignant  if  anyone  suggested 
that  his  scarabs  were  really  old  ;  but  the  dealers  who  bought 
from  him  had  no  such  compunction. 

I  had  spent  two  or  three  evenings  in  the  dark  native 
houses  of  Luxor,  finding  nothing  but  the  ordinary  poor 
rubbish  that  came  to  the  surface  everywhere  in  Egypt.  At 
last  I  w^as  taken,  with  what  seemed  no  more  than  the  usual 
precautions,  into  an  inner  room  within  the  courtyard  of  a 
specially  secluded  house,  and  there,  to  my  astonishment, 
they  showed  me  a  few  quite  extraordinary  treasures.  I 
knew  enough  to  recognise  them  at  once  as  work  of  the 
eighteenth  dynasty,  the  most  attractive  period  of  ancient 
Egyptian  art.  We  were  in  a  low-roofed  room  with  a  little 
ramshackle  furniture.  The  mud  walls  were  naked.  The 
floor  was  of  hard  mud.  The  place  was  very  dirty.  It  was 
otherwise  empty  when  we  entered.  Women,  veiling  their 
faces,  brought  things  in  from  the  background,  one  by  one. 
First  there  was  the  head  of  a  limestone  statue  of  a  woman, 
very  finely  wrought  and  with  remains  of  paint  on  the 
voluminous  wig.  The  long  face,  the  drooping  chin,  the 
broken  fragment  of  what  must  have  been  a  long  neck,  were 
unmistakable.  It  was  the  head  of  some  member  of  the 
family  of  the  heretic  King  Amenhotep  IV.  A  friend  who 
was  with  me  promptly  acquired  it.  Then  came  a  number 
of  small  objects,  some  of  very  fine  quality,  but  they  were 
all  late,  and  the  prices  were  high.  It  was  no  use  trying  to 
bargain.  Take  them  or  leave  them  was  the  order  of  the 
day.    Then  there  was  a  delay.    The  whole  aif  air  was  excel- 


78  THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


lently  stage-managed.  Faint  sounds  in  the  back  quarters 
indicated  that  a  heavy  object  was  coming.  Two  persons 
brought  it  into  the  room  and  set  it  on  the  table.  The  cloth 
that  covered  it  was  removed,  and  I  beheld  a  seated  lime- 
stone figure  about  two  feet  hi^h  and  in  faultless  preserva- 
tion, the  portrait  statue  of  a  princess  of  the  family  of  the 
same  Amenhotep.  I  have  never  seen  a  more  perfect  work 
of  ancient  Egyptian  sculpture.  It  was  admirable  in  design, 
delicate  in  finish,  entirely  portrait-like,  and  yet  as  com- 
pletely incorporating  the  ancient  Egyptian  ideal  of  repose 
as  if  it  had  been  solely  imagined  to  that  end.  The  lime- 
stone bust  of  Amenhotep  IV.  in  the  Louvre,  which  I  did 
not  then  know,  may  have  been  a  work  by  the  same  sculptor, 
but  that  is  damaged,  while  this  had  not  a  scratch.  It  must  • 
have  been  recently  removed  from  the  tomb  in  which  it  had 
remained  untouched  and  even  unbeheld  for  upwards  of 
three  millennia.  I  ought  at  once  to  have  recognised  that 
these  people  had  found  access  to  royal  tombs  of  the  family 
of  that  Pharaoh  who  moved  the  capital  of  Egypt  to  Tel-el- 
Amarna.  But  I  did  not  put  two  and  two  together  till  later. 
For  half  an  hour  I  lingered  regretfully  over  this  beautiful 
object,  whose  price  was  far  beyond  my  reach.  In  its  pre- 
sence all  other  objects  seemed  relatively  little  desirable.  A 
Russian  nobleman  bought  it  next  day,  I  believe,  and  I  have 
never  since  heard  tell  of  it.  Like  the  bird  of  the  Synod 
of  Whitby  that  flew  in  at  one  door  and  out  at  the  other  of 
the  great  hall,  the  white  princess  came  for  me  out  of  the 
night  and  vanished  back  into  it  again,  but  her  beauty  and 
perfection  abide  for  ever  in  my  memory. 

Returning  late  to  our  boat,  the  men  that  followed  me 
along  the  narrow  lanes  under  the  brilliant  stars  carried  a 
few  not  undesirable  acquisitions.     These  included  the 


TANAGRA  AND  ASIA  MINOR  TERRA-COTTAS 
{See  p.  103) 


VARIOUS  EGYPTIAN,  PERUVIAN,  AND  OTHER  OBJECTS 

Facing  p.  78 


THE  WHITE  PRINCESS 


79 


painted  limestone  figure  of  a  kneeling  priest  holding  a  stele 
upright  before  him.  He  was  Tuty  by  name,  and  his  office 
was  superintendent  of  the  warehouse.  The  figure  is  good 
genuine  work  of  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty. 
There  was  also  a  seated  limestone  portrait  statue  of  a  man, 
about  twelve  inches  high,  of  the  end  of  the  same  dynasty, 
a  conventional  example  of  well-known  type.  His  naine  was 
Sebeh-menkh,  and  he  was  superintendent  of  the  recruits. 
There  was  also  an  early  wooden  figure  of  a  bread-maker, 
perfectly  preserved,  with  its  original  wash  of  paint  all  over 
— a  sketchy  piece  of  work,  but  remarkably  vital.  The 
shadow  or  ghost  of  this  figure  buried  in  its  owner*s  tomb 
was  intended  to  supply  that  owner's  ghost  with  the  ghost 
of  bread  throughout  all  the  long  interval  between  his  burial 
and  his  resurrection.  It  did  its  duty  for  the  best  part  of 
4,000  years,  till  the  tomb-robbers  carried  it  off.  I  wonder 
whether  its  owner's  ghost  now  comes  to  Allington  for  hot 
rolls,  and  whether  it  hobnobs  in  the  moonlight  with  the 
ghosts  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  and  Anne  Boleyn.  There  was 
also  a  small  limestone  figure  of  a  woman  of  the  seventeenth 
dynasty,  two  other  small  portrait  statues,  and  a  number  of 
objects  of  minor  interest  and  fragments. 

A  fortnight  later,  on  our  way  down  the  river,  we  tied  up 
late  in  the  evening  off  Ekhmin,  At  that  time  the  place 
overflowed  with  Ptolemaic,  Roman,  and  Coptic  antiquities. 
The  villagers  seemed  to  possess  right  of  free  warren  in  the 
tombs  of  their  forefathers,  and  those  must  have  been  legion. 
After  dinner  I  landed  with  a  boatman  and  a  lantern,  to 
visit  the  dealers,  of  whom  there  were  several.  They  offered 
for  sale  wooden  statues  and  alabaster  vases,  countless  little 
statuettes,  and  an  excellent  wooden  Boat  of  the  Dead,  with 
lots  of  painted  oarsmen  and  steersmen,  the  dead  man  seated 


8o 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


in  state  under  a  four-post  canopy,  a  priest  and  his  son 
standing  before  him,  and  his  wife  behind  kneehng  on  the 
deck.  Such  boats  are  common  enough,  but  when  one 
comes  to  them  straight  off  the  Nile  they  have  a  strangely 
vivid  look.  It  was  late  in  the  season,  and  the  market  for 
the  dealers'  wares  was  nearly  over,  so  they  began  bidding 
one  against  another  for  my  custom.  If  I  had  had  more 
sense  I  should  have  devoted  more  attention  to  the  quantity 
of  pieces  of  Coptic  woven  stuffs  with  figure  designs  upon 
them  which  were  only  then  beginning  to  attract  the  notice 
they  have  since  received  in  full  measure.  These  old  rags, 
however,  seen  by  the  light  of  a  flickering  oil  lamp,  are  not 
particularly  beautiful  or  attractive  objects,  and,  besides,  I 
had  not  begun  to  take  interest  in  Coptic  art.  It  was  the 
three  large  wooden  figures  that  attracted  me,  and  I  made 
an  offer  for  one  of  them.  As  it  was  not  accepted,  I 
returned  to  the  boat,  and  then  the  fun  began. 

The  night  was  brilliantly  starlit,  and  I  could  not  drag 
myself  away  from  the  company  of  the  constellations.  I  was 
only  beginning  to  be  familiar  with  the  Southern  Cross  and 
that  neighbourhood  of  the  heavens,  which  we  had  slowly 
seen  rise  into  view  as  we  went  southward,  and  were  now 
as  slowly  losing  on  our  northward  return.  In  bygone  years 
astronomy  had  been  a  chief  interest  for  me,  and  for  a  long 
time  no  clear  night  went  by  without  my  spending  a  few 
hours  at  the  telescope.  Starry  nights  still  bring  back  the 
feeling  of  those  young  days,  their  stillness  and  solitude,  the 
wonder  of  the  heavens,  the  excitement  of  a  first  view  of 
some  nebula,  some  double  star,  some  glittering  cluster, 
surely  amongst  the  fairest  sights  the  eye  of  man  can  behold. 
It  was  the  memory  of  those  even  then  far-past  nights  of 
bliss  that  kept  me  on  the  deck  of  the  dahabiyeh  till  long 


COPTIC  STELES 


8i 


after  midnight.  The  village,  or  part  of  it,  remained  awake ; 
there  was  a  continual  drumming  and  singing.  Evidently 
some  local  fete  was  going  on.  At  intervals  dim  shapes 
appeared  on  the  bank  and  called  out  to  me.  They  were  the 
dealers  still  trying  to  tempt  me  with  their  wares.  The 
wooden  figures  approached  and  vanished  on  the  heads  of 
dusky  bearers.  Trays  of  other  objects,  fitfully  illuminated 
by  smoky  lights,  were  displayed,  and  then  carried  away. 
Prices  were  called  out.  Folk  kept  coming  forth  and  re- 
treating again  into  the  night,  only  to  reappear  once  more. 
At  last,  at  two  o'clock,  I  prepared  to  go  to  bed.  The 
watchers  saw  that  the  decisive  moment  was  come.  The 
wooden  figure  I  really  wanted  was  brought  forward  once 
more  and  handed  over  to  me  at  my  own  price.  I  took  it 
down  into  my  cabin,  and  it  has  dwelt  with  me  ever  since. 

The  only  other  incident  of  acquisition  in  Egypt  which 
needs  to  be  recorded  is  the  way  we  obtained  some  Coptic 
steles  of  about  seventh-century  date.  It  was  on  one  of 
those  contrary  days  in  March,  when  a  strong  north  wind 
kept  us  from  moving  down-stream.  As  the  day  advanced 
it  became  evident  that  progress  was  going  to  be  impossible 
till  the  morrow,  so  I  rode  off  on  a  donkey  to  the  Coptic 
settlement  called  Dair  Manaos  wa  Shenude,  some  distance 
south  of  Esneh.  The  ruinous  church  consists  of  a  kind  of 
honeycomb  of  square  chambers,  each  surmounted  by  its 
own  Httle  dome,  supported  on  arches  across  the  angles  of 
the  square,  whilst  pointed  arched  openings  connected  the 
chambers  together  and  united  them  into  a  church.  A  great 
number  of  Coptic  tombstones  were  built  into  the  walls  of 
the  Dair,  and  there  had  once  been  many  more.  What  had 
happened  to  them  was  shown  by  the  neighbouring  cluster  of 
houses,  of  which  many,  in  their  turn,  were  in  ruins.  The 
F 


82 


THE  HUNT  IN  EGYPT 


old  steles  had  been  pillaged  and  used  as  hinge-stones  for 
the  doors  to  turn  on,  or  built  in  for  coigns.  A  native  fol- 
lowed us  to  one  disroof  ed  hut,  which  he  assured  us  belonged 
to  him.  When  he  saw  me  examining  the  stones  he  promptly 
pulled  down  the  remains  of  the  door,  disengaged  the  hinge- 
post  from  the  round  hole  in  the  stone  within  which  it  had 
turned,  pulled  up  the  stone,  and  offered  it  to  me  for  a  piece 
of  silver.  I  purchased  it,  and  he  promptly  pulled  down 
part  of  the  wall  and  disengaged  two  more  complete  steles 
and  some  fragments.  Fortunately,  several  of  the  boatmen 
had  come  with  me.  Each  of  them  shouldered  a  stone,  and 
we  marched  back  in  triumph  with  them  to  the  dahabiyeh. 
They  are  now  firmly  built  into  the  repaired  part  of  a  thir- 
teenth-century wall  at  AUington  Castle,  from  which  it  will 
be  difficult  to  rend  them  forth.  It  is  to  save  future  anti- 
quarians trouble  when,  say  in  the  thirtieth  century,  this 
building  may  once  again  fall  into  ruin,  that  I  here  put  on 
record  the  provenance  of  these  stones ! 


CHAPTER  VIL 


FROM   INDIA  TO  PERU 

INDIA  is  not  a  very  good  country  for  hunting  antiquities. 
One  cannot  carry  away  a  Jain  temple,  even  if  one 
might  The  decorative  sculpture  of  mediaeval  India 
is  not  attractive ;  at  all  events,  not  attractive  to  me.  There 
are  ancient  bronzes  to  be  found,  but  they  give  so  much 
more  pleasure  to  refined  Indian  lovers  of  their  own  past 
than  to  the  European  eye  that  it  seems  best  to  leave  them 
where  they  belong.  What  the  art-loving  traveller  is 
tempted  to  buy  is  modern  or  recent  work,  but  it  is  very 
disappointing  stuff  in  the  long  run.  The  carved  tables, 
the  hammered  copper  and  silverwork,  the  fapier-mdchiy 
and  even  the  shawls  and  embroidered  or  painted  textiles, 
that  look  so  attractive  when  displayed  in  the  shadow  of  a 
verandah  by  picturesque  native  artisans  in  the  light  of 
India,  lose  half  their  romance,  half  their  charm  of  colour, 
and  more  than  half  their  general  picturesqueness  by  trans- 
plantation to  an  English  interior.  What  was  packed  up 
with  pride  is  unpacked  at  home  with  disillusion.  Who 
does  not  know  the  sets  of  carved  ivory  chessmen,  the  inlaid 
sandalwood  boxes,  the  brass  gods,  and  other  the  like  bric-a- 
brac  which,  after  glorifying  the  drawing-room  of  some 
retired  Anglo-Indian,  have  drifted  away  into  the  cupboards 
of  his  descendants  ?  England  must  be  full  of  such  stuff ; 
and  yet  when  for  the  first  time  one  comes  across  it  in  the 


84  FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


bazaars  of  India,  it  surprises  with  a  strange  attractiveness, 
only  to  disappoint  yet  one  more  purchaser  when  he  gets 
it  home. 

When  I  was  on  my  way  to  India,  I  knew  perfectly  well 
that  I  was  not  going  to  want  any  of  these  things,  but  there 
was  one  kind  of  object  that  I  did  want,  and  intended  to  get, 
if  good  luck  would  be  with  me.  This  was  an  example  of 
what  is  known  as  the  Gandhara  School  of  Sculpture.  Before 
Alexander  the  Great  invaded  North-West  India,  stone  was 
not  used  in  that  country  either  for  architecture  or  sculp- 
ture. They  built  in  wood,  and  if  they  sculptured  at  all, 
which  seems  unlikely,  it  must  have  been  in  clay ;  but  no 
examples  of  pre-Alexandrian  Indian  art  have  survived.  It 
was  the  Greeks  who  taught  the  Buddhists  of  Swat  and 
thereabouts  to  sculpture  in  stone,  and  the  tradition  thus 
founded  lasted  on.  The  best  work  of  the  kind  is  the 
earliest  The  Greco-Bactrian  School,  of  the  third  and 
second  centuries  before  Christ,  took  firm  hold,  and  spread 
its  influences  throughout  the  hill-country  west  of  the  Upper 
Indus,  and  in  the  vale  of  Kashmir,  as  well  as  across  the 
great  plain  of  North  India.  I  am  not  concerned  here  to 
trace  either  its  rise  or  its  fortunes.  Perhaps  there  may  have 
existed  a  Buddhist  school  of  art  before  the  coming  of  the 
Greeks,  and  maybe  the  various  types  of  Buddha  and  the 
incidents  of  his  legend  were  modelled  in  clay  or  carved 
in  wood  before  ever  a  Greek  chisel  crossed  Iran ;  but  no 
trace  of  any  such  early  Buddhist  art  has  been  found,  and 
its  existence  is  doubted.  As  soon,  however,  as  Buddhist 
craftsmen  came  in  contact  with  the  Greek  tradition,  and 
learned  to  use  Western  tools,  their  style,  if  they  had  one, 
was  modified,  as  well  as  their  technique,  so  that  the  earliest 
sculptures  of  what  is  known  as  the  Gandhara  School  mani- 


GANDHARA  SCULPTURE 


85 


f est  plainly  the  Greek  element  in  their  design.  They  were 
applied  to  the  decoration  of  Buddhist  sacred  edifices,  stupas, 
temples,  monasteries,  and  such-like.  For  the  most  part 
they  were  wrought  on  a  small  scale.  Some  figures  of 
about  life-size  there  were,  and  others  rather  smaller,  but 
the  bulk  of  what  survives  is  in  the  form  of  reliefs,  almost 
in  the  round,  carved  in  little  niches  out  of  the  black  slaty 
stone  of  the  Swat  country.  For  it  is  there  and  thereabouts 
that  the  bulk  of  the  early  Gandhara  sculpture  has  been 
found.  For  some  time  Hoti  Murdan  was  the  chief  source 
of  supply,  but  a  quantity  was  obtained  from  previously 
inaccessible  sources  by  the  Chitral  expedition,  and  in  con- 
sequence of  the  more  or  less  settled  conditions  in  those 
parts  which  then  ensued.  The  school  continued  active  for 
many  generations,  and  shows  changes  of  style  correspond- 
ing to  the  passage  of  time.  When  the  Greco-Bactrian 
Kingdom  was  replaced  by  the  Indo-Scythians,  and  the 
Parthian  Kingdom,  in  continual  combat  with  Rome,  inter- 
vened between  India  and  the  West,  Buddhist  art  had  to 
find  its  own  way,  free  from  Western  influences.  Thereupon 
the  purely  Indian  spirit  gained  the  upper  hand,  and  before 
long,  all  but  a  faint  trace  of  the  original  Greek  impulse 
was  lost. 

Possessed  by  the  desire  to  obtain  if  it  were  only  a  small 
fragment  of  this  kind  of  sculpture  of  the  early  fine  period, 
I  made  such  careful  study  as  opportunity  threw  in  my  way 
of  the  examples  of  it  now  honourably  preserved  in  the 
museums  of  India,  and  especially  at  Lahore.  Everywhere 
I  sought  for  some  unattached  example  that  I  might  appro- 
priate, but  nowhere  did  success  crown  my  efforts,  and  my 
last  month  in  India  had  come.  Thereupon  I  determined 
to  go  to  Peshawar,  as  much  on  this  quest  as  to  visit  the 


86 


FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


Khyber  Pass.  The  latter  wish  was  fulfilled  by  the  kind- 
ness of  General  Sir  Henry  Collett,  who  took  me  to  visit 
the  Pass,  and  gave  me  the  delightful  hospitality  of  a  night 
with  his  telescope,  an  instrument  that  chance  threw  twenty 
years  later  into  the  possession  of  a  kinsman  of  mine,  so 
that  I  may  hope  some  day  to  have  the  use  of  it  for  a  night 
once  more.  I  was  leaving  Peshawar  the  following  after- 
noon, and  only  had  a  few  hours  left  for  the  bazaars.  Char- 
tering a  vehicle,  I  drove  rather  at  random  about  the  town, 
with  my  eyes  open,  and  the  thought  of  Gandhara  sculpture 
always  at  the  back  of  my  head.  Peshawar  is  a  hotbed  of 
Mussulman  agitation,  so  that  I  was  advised  to  be  a  little 
careful  where  I  went,  but  when  I  passed  the  gate  of  a  Hindu 
temple  I  felt  that  I  might  reasonably  enough  venture  into 
the  recesses  of  the  fane  of  a  people  unpopular  and  unim- 
portant in  that  locality.  A  stone-paved  pathway  led  straight 
from  the  entrance  gate  through  garden  courtyards  to  the 
inmost  shrine.  Something  attracted  me  to  follow  it  as 
though  I  had  been  a  needle  drawn  by  a  magnet.  On 
approaching  the  lingam,  I  saw  wherein  the  strange  force 
resided,  for  there,  actually  leaning  against  the  sacred  stone, 
and  thickly  covered  by  the  oil  with  which  it  was  periodically 
anointed,  was  an  admirable  panel  of  Gandhara  sculpture. 
As  I  was  standing  in  the  deserted  shrine  with  the  sculpture 
in  my  hands,  an  almost  naked  heathen  came  rushing  to- 
ward me.  His  skin  looked  so  very  smooth  and  brown, 
and  he  appeared  so  comic,  dancing  about  in  a  kind  of  fury, 
that  some  Puck-like  spirit  entered  into  me.  Raising  my 
hand,  I  gave  him  a  resounding  smack  on  his  naked  back, 
which  startled  him  into  a  petrified  silence.  We  stood  like 
stone  figures  for  a  perceptible  time,  gazing  at  one  another. 
My  hand  glided  gently  to  my  pocket,  and  produced  certain 


Facing  p.  86 


PESHAWAR  TEMPLE 


87 


silver  coins.  His  hand  crept  forth  with  the  palm  open. 
Nothing  was  said.  I  walked  off  quietly  in  one  direction, 
bearing  the  carved  relief,  he  vanished  noiselessly  in  the 
other,  clutching  the  rupees.  Thus  silence  again  descended 
on  the  sun-bathed  temple,  and  an  hour  or  two  later  the 
train  was  bearing  me  away  toward  Bombay  and  England. 

The  Buddha  type,  which  may  have  taken  form  in  North 
India  before  the  coming  of  Greek  influence,  was  certainly 
modified  and  dignified  by  that  influence  when  the  Gandhara 
sculptors  translated  it  into  stone.  The  form  it  then 
assumed  became  a  standard,  which  went  wherever  the 
Buddhist  religion  spread,  and  was  maintained  with  little 
alteration  down  to  modern  times.  It  is  in  Japan  that  the 
finest  existing  specimens  of  the  type  survive.  Remarkable 
Buddhas  and  Bodhisattwas  were  made  in  Japan  during  a 
long  succession  of  centuries,  some  of  them  being  wonder- 
fully noble  sculptures,  incorporating  the  repose  of  the  East 
with  a  monumental  dignity  that  found  its  earliest  and  per- 
haps its  best  expression  in  ancient  Egypt 

About  twenty  years  ago,  owing  to  a  change  in  the  re- 
ligious ideas  of  the  Japanese,  European  markets  were 
flooded  with  Japanese  Buddhas*  and  Buddhist  saints.  These 
were  of  all  sizes,  large  and  small,  and  of  various  materials. 
Most  were  of  wood,  lacquered  or  gilt.  Many  were  of 
bronze.  I  was  greatly  attracted  by  these  figures,  and 
bought  several  of  them.  They  were  commonest  in  London, 
but  one  met  with  them  everywhere.  Not  infrequently  they 
were  employed  to  give  an  Oriental  tone  to  the  windows  of 

*  I  use  this  term  loosely  for  any  seated,  cross-legged  figure  that 
looks  to  Western  eyes  like  a  Buddha,  The  majority  of  such  figures  do 
not,  in  fact,  represent  Gautama  Buddha  at  all,  but  various  saints  and 
incarnations.  All  these  figures,  however,  incorporate  the  same  ideal, 
and  are  practically  the  expression  of  a  single  conception. 


88  FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


tea-shops.  The  wooden  figures  were  frail,  and  probably 
a  great  number  of  them  suffered  rapid  degradation,  and, 
finally,  destruction,  in  their  last  refuges  in  England.  The 
purchasing  public  did  not  appreciate  them,  and  I  was  thus 
enabled  to  buy  the  finest  example  that  till  then,  or  ever 
since,  I  have  anywhere  seen,  out  of  a  shop  in  Regent  Street 
at  a  very  small  price.  They  told  me  that  this  figure  had 
been  in  their  hands  for  ten  years,  yet  no  one  had  ever  even 
asked  its  price.  It  is  a  seated  figure,  nearly  half  life  size. 
The  type  does  not  vary  from  the  normal  in  any  way,  but  it 
surpasses  all  other  Buddhas  known  to  me  in  the  quality  of 
the  drapery  and  the  refinement  of  the  lines  of  the  folds. 
It  dates  from  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century.  It  has 
lost  the  lotus  pedestal  and  the  gilt  halo  required  to  complete 
it.  It  was  sold  in  a  cabinet  which,  however,  was  originally 
used  for  another  purpose. 

Of  similar  size  and  type  is  a  bronze  Buddha  seated  on 
a  lotus  pedestal,  and  much  more  highly  considered  than 
its  wooden  companion.  As  sculpture,  however,  the  wooden 
Buddha  is  greatly  superior.  The  best  part  of  the  bronze 
example  is  the  base,  which  is  of  remarkable  delicacy  and 
finish  of  detailed  form.  The  lobes  around  the  base  are  as 
beautiful  as  the  finest  eggs  in  the  egg-and-dart  mouldings 
of  Greek  buildings  of  the  culminating  period  of  Greek 
architecture.  On  the  back  is  the  following  inscription, 
translated  for  me  by  my  friend,  Mr.  Shugio  :  "  Respectfully 
dedicated  to  the  temple  of  Ankoji  of  Kamakura,  July  3rd, 
in  the  first  year  of  Genroku  (1688),  by  Kobayashi  Heikichi, 
the  donor." 

There  are  a  good  many  other  Japanese  objects  that  have 
fallen  in  my  way,  most  of  them  picked  up  years  ago,  before 
such  things  became  costly,  but  I  will  only  mention  one  lot — 


A  GILT  BUDDHA 
Height  18i  in. 


Facing  p.  88 


TIBETAN  ANTIQUITIES  89 


a  bucketful  of  wrought-iron  sword-guards,  some  beauti- 
fully inlaid,  but  all  of  the  early  time  before  the  great 
elaboration  of  these  articles  became  fashionable.  I  forget 
how  we  heard  of  them.  It  was,  I  remember,  the  day  before 
I  was  sailing  for  India,  when  there  was  not  a  moment  to 
spare.  My  wife  ultimately  ran  them  to  earth  in  the  City, 
and  bought  them  by  weight  for  little  more  than  the  value 
of  the  metal.  There  was  only  one  bucketful  of  them  left. 
Twice  as  many  had  been  practically  given  away  the  day 
before. 

In  the  western  part  of  Tibet,  which  belongs  to  the  king- 
dom of  Kashmir,  and  is  named  Ladakh,  Buddhism,  or  a 
form  of  it  called  Lamaism,  still  flourishes.  Every  village 
has  its  temple  and  its  lamasery,  and  at  points  on  all  the 
roads  are  Buddhistic  monuments — ^Chortens,  mani-mounds, 
prayer-wheels,  and  the  like.  In  this  part  I  was  able  to 
acquire  a  certain  number  of  objects  of  small  intrinsic  value, 
but  of  archaeological  interest,  which  Sir  Augustus  Franks 
gladly  accepted  from  me  for  the  British  Museum.  The 
monks  at  Hemis  and  the  other  important  monasteries  are 
wisely  careful  to  keep  every  sacred  object  that  belongs  to 
the  temple.  They  will  not  sell  an  image,  a  banner,  or  a 
book  that  belongs  to  them,  and  I  trust  that  this  attitude  of 
theirs  will  continue.  I  daresay  that  under  the  shadow  of 
darkness  it  might  have  been  possible  to  overcome  their 
scruples,  but  I  had  no  desire  to  try,  and  the  more  so  that 
at  Hemis  I  was  the  guest  of  the  convent,  and  they  even  per- 
formed a  splendid  religious  ceremony  for  my  edification, 
with  much  singing,  beating  of  drums,  and  splendour  of 
masks  and  costumes.  So  I  made  no  attempt  on  the  temple 
treasures,  the  figured  banners  of  all  colours,  the  images 
large  and  small  in  clay  or  brass,  the  illuminated  manu- 


go  FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


scripts,  and  all  the  stores  of  things,  many  of  them  line  works 
of  the  Lhassa  School,  and  of  considerable  antiquity,  with 
which  this  great  store-house  overflows. 

From  the  smaller  religious  centres,  however,  I  did  not 
go  quite  empty  away.  Thus,  one  night,  when  I  was 
encamped  below  Lamayuru,  strange  things  happened.  I 
had  visited  the  Gonpa  in  the  afternoon,  and  been  shown 
over  it.  I  had  lingered  for  some  time  in  the  library,  where 
what  seemed  to  be  immense  quantities  of  manuscripts  were 
stored.  In  particular  there  was  a  great  set  of  books  written 
on  large  cardboard-like  leaves  stained  blue,  the  text  being 
written  in  alternate  lines  coloured  to  resemble  gold,  silver, 
and  copper.  There  were  also  circular  miniatures  delicately 
painted  in  bright  colours  at  frequent  intervals.  The  books 
of  this  set,  tied  up  between  moulded  boards  for  bindings, 
must  have  numbered  several  hundreds.  They  were  stacked 
together  in  apparent  confusion,  many  having  burst  their 
strings,  so  that  the  loose  leaves  had  poured  forth  and  been 
chaotically  mixed  together.  I  lusted  for  some  of  these 
leaves,  and  asked  to  buy  them,  but  great  difficulties  were 
made,  though  I  was  finally  allowed  to  carry  off  a  few  in  the 
"keeper's"  pocket  of  my  coat.  No  sooner  had  darkness 
come  on,  and  I  was  settled  down  with  my  fellow-travellers 
to  our  evening  meal,  than  a  monk  from  the  Gonpa  slipped 
quietly  into  camp.  The  servants  brought  him  to  me,  and 
he  began  to  talk  volubly,  but  none  of  us  knew  a  word  of 
Tibetan,  and  he  knew  nothing  else.  The  substance  of 
what  he  had  to  say  was  easily  made  apparent  when  he 
produced  a  couple  of  manuscripts  from  the  folds  of  his 
raiment.  I  tried  to  explain  to  him  that  I  was  not  interested 
in  unilluminated  MSS.,  and  gave  him  back  his  offering,  but 
he  would  not  take  it.    He  just  left  the  books  on  the  floor 


A  LAMA'S  MANIS 


91 


of  the  tent  and  slipped  away.  An  hour  later  he  was  back 
again,  this  time  with  a  blue  coloured  manuscript  like  those 
I  had  seen  in  the  Gonpa  Library,  but  whether  it  had  be- 
longed to  the  set  I  could  not  tell.  He  pushed  it  under  the 
fly  of  the  tent,  and  then  held  out  his  hand. 

These  Tibetan  monks  were  curious  people.  I  met  one 
of  them  on  the  road  saying  his  prayers  by  rotating  a  wheel 
as  he  walked  slowly  along.  He  was  carrying  a  copper 
vessel,  in  shape  like  a  teapot,  with  a  turquoise  mounted 
on  the  spout,  also  a  little  plate  and  spoon  and  a  couple  of 
small  cymbals  united  by  a  chain,  and  very  useful  for  driving 
away  devils.  He  offered  them  to  me,  and  demanded  a 
price  in  rupees,  which  I  paid  him.  His  things  were  duly 
packed  into  one  of  our  pieces  of  baggage,  and  we  were 
about  to  go  forward,  when  he  sat  down  and  began  to  weep 
bitterly.  I  enquired  why  he  was  weeping.  He  said  it 
was  because  I  was  taking  away  his  manis  (sacred  things), 
which  had  belonged  to  his  forefathers.  I  had  them  un- 
packed and  offered  to  return  them.  He  was  delighted,  but 
would  not  give  back  the  rupees.  He  said  he  wanted  to  keep 
both  them  and  his  manis.  I  told  him  to  put  the  rupees  on 
the  ground  beside  his  things.  He  did  so.  "  Now,  choose 
which  you  will  have — the  rupees  or  the  manisr  He  picked 
up  the  rupees  and  went  his  way,  again  weeping  loudly  as 
long  as  we  were  within  hearing.  When  I  looked  back  on 
him  from  a  remoter  distance,  he  appeared  to  have  recovered 
his  peace  of  mind. 

The  day  after  our  visit  to  Lamayuru,  we  camped  at 
Saspul,  where  is  a  new  Gonpa,  built  down  by  the  road-side, 
containing  three  colossal  figures,  badly  modelled  in  mud, 
and  with  the  walls  crudely  painted.  I  had  been  advised 
to  hunt  up  the  ruins  of  the  old  Gonpa.    What  remains  of 


92  FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


it  is  the  rock-cut  chambers,  rudely  hollowed  out  of  a  hard 
conglomerate  cliff.  They  were  closed  in  front  by  built-up 
walls.  There  were  quite  a  number  of  these  chambers,  in 
rows  and  storeys  one  above  another,  and  connecting  gal- 
leries and  staircases  had  been  built  up  in  front  out  of  crude 
brick ;  in  fact,  it  was  a  typical  mountain  Gonpa  of  the 
traditional  sort.  Several  of  the  larger  chambers  still  retain 
their  painted  decoration.  The  paintings  were  done  on 
plaster  laid  against  the  nubbly  conglomerate  walls.  Here 
and  there  a  refractory  portion  of  the  surface  was  corered 
with  canvas,  and  the  painting  had  been  done  on  it  on  the 
same  kind  of  ground  as  that  with  which  the  plaster  was 
overlaid.  A  portion  of  canvas  had  fallen  from  the  wall, 
and  was  lying  about  in  the  dust  on  the  floor.  As  the  whole 
place  was  utterly  abandoned,  I  had  no  hesitation  in  rescuing 
this  fragment  from  the  destruction  which  was  overtaking 
the  rest.  The  pictures  included  hundreds  of  little  seated 
figures,  like  Buddhas,  and  many  larger  ones  of  gods,  devils, 
and  the  like.  There  was  a  seated  saint,  teaching,  sur- 
rounded by  some  fifty  or  more  minute  disciples.  There 
was  also  the  figure  of  Avalokita  with  the  Thousand  Arms, 
so  popular  hereabouts ;  and  there  were  besides  many  illus- 
trations of  legends  which  I  had  not  the  knowledge  to 
interpret.  The  drawing  was  admirably  done  with  a  free 
and  certain  line,  and  the  figures  in  action  were  drawn  with 
spirit ;  the  colours  were  applied  flat,  and  were  few  in  num- 
ber and  good  in  quality,  combination,  and  proportion.  I 
don't  think  the  paintings  date  from  before  the  seventeenth 
century.  They  contain,  however,  that  mixture  of  Indian 
with  Chinese  traditions  which  Dr.  Stein  has  revealed  in  the 
Central  Asian  art  of  a  much  earher  period. 

A  leap  from  Tibet  to  Peru— from  75  deg.  east  longitude 


INCA  ANTIQUITIES  93 


to  75  deg.  west — may  seem  somewhat  inconsequential ;  yet, 
just  as  the  fertile  parts  of  Chile  behind  Valparaiso  always 
kept  reminding  me  of  Kashmir,  so  the  desert  region  of  the 
Andes  bears  a  remarkable  resemblance  to  Western  Tibet. 
The  traveller  going  from  Europe  to  Peru  looks  forward 
to  landing  in  a  world  markedly  "new,"  but  the  first  im- 
pression he  actually  receives  is  of  the  extreme  antiquity 
of  man  in  that  land.  Peru  and  Bolivia,  especially  Bolivia, 
have  the  aspect  of  antiquity  quite  as  markedly  as  India, 
except  where  purely  European  conditions  have  been  intro- 
duced, and  both  countries  are  alike  in  that  respect  also. 
The  Indian  aborigines  of  the  land  of  the  Incas  have  all  the 
aspect  of  an  ancient  race,  still  in  the  possession  of  their 
own  most  venerable  traditions  and  civilisation.  European 
influence  seems  not  to  have  touched  them  any  more  than  it 
has  touched  the  mass  of  the  natives  of  India. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  Quichuas  and  Aymaras  and  other 
surviving  peoples  of  Peru  and  Bolivia  that  seem  ancient. 
The  buildings  of  the  Spanish  conquerors  likewise  possess 
a  venerable  aspect.  Lima  seemed  to  me  more  like  a  re- 
stored Pompeii  than  anything  else.  Its  houses,  with  their 
courtyards,  their  blank  faces  to  the  street,  their  aspect  of 
reserve  and  readiness  for  defence,  appear  anything  rather 
than  modem.  Almost  any  city  in  Europe  looks  young 
compared  with  Lima.  Hence,  from  the  moment  of  arrival, 
my  thoughts  were  turned  rather  back  into  the  past  than  to 
the  present  or  the  future ;  because,  of  course,  the  history 
and  antiquities  of  any  old  country  must  always  be  more 
interesting  than  its  current  activities  or  its  future  prospects, 
except  perhaps  to  the  inhabitants  themselves.  What  can 
be  more  boring  to  a  foreigner  than  to  have  some  citizen 
of  the  place  he  is  visiting  describe  to  him  at  length  all  that 


94  FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


that  city  is  going  to  be  in  some  future  near  or  distant? 
Eloquent  local  prophets  of  local  glories  to  come  no  doubt 
have  a  good  time  with  their  contemporaries  at  home,  but 
they  should  not  be  permitted  to  travel  unmuzzled.  Which 
of  us  has  not  suffered  from  such? 

The  first  shop  I  discovered  in  Lima  was  one  that  dealt 
in  antiquities.  But  you  do  not  buy  genuine  old  things 
cheaply  in  those  parts.  Wealthy  local  collectors  are 
numerous  and  persistent.  Old  Spanish  silver  is  hard  to  find 
and  very  costly.  In  the  earliest  colonial  days  silver  was  a 
common  metal,  and  every  self-respecting  descendant  of  the 
conquerors  had  his  table  service  made  by  local  craftsmen 
out  of  silver.  Such  plates  and  bowls  are  of  great  thickness 
and  weight,  generally  almost  plain,  and  lacking  in  grace 
of  form.  I  found  them  undesirable,  and  although  I  once 
came  across  some  fair  specimens  in  a  Bolivian  finca,  which 
the  owner  would  have  given  me  for  the  value  of  the  silver, 
I  had  no  desire  to  possess  them. 

It  will,  I  imagine,  surprise  many  European  collectors  to 
be  told  that  South  America  in  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  produced  furniture  of  excellent  quality 
and  original  design.  The  styles  of  Panama,  Guayaquil,  and 
Lima  were  all  different,  and  local  collectors  diligently  seek 
for  the  products  of  the  old  cabinet-makers  of  those  places. 
The  finest  piece  of  furniture  I  saw  was  in  the  house  let 
furnished  to  the  Secretary  of  the  United  States  Legation 
at  the  time  of  my  visit  to  Lima.  It  was  a  great  mahogany 
table  at  which  the  Inquisitors  used  to  sit.  The  top  was 
very  massive,  and  of  splendid  wood,  and  it  was  supported 
on  four  lion-legs  magnificently  carved.  I  thought  I  had 
succeeded  in  purchasing  it,  but  there  was  some  misunder- 
standing, and  it  never  reached  England. 


INCA  POTTERY 


95 


It  is  the  misfortune  of  Peruvian  antiquities  that  the 
excavation  of  Inca  cemeteries  and  remains  has  seldom  been 
scientifically  carried  out.  As  a  rule  the  manager  of  some 
sugar  estate  or  person  engaged  in  business  finds  huakkas 
in  the  ground,  and  proceeds  to  dig  them  up,  without  pay- 
ing the  slightest  regard  to  how  they  were  buried,  or  putting 
on  record  any  of  the  facts  which  are  essential  from  a  stu- 
dent's point  of  view.  Only  the  other  day  a  friend  of  mine 
was  asked  to  bring  home  for  sale  on  behalf  of  the  finder 
a  great  mass  of  gold  objects  which  had  been  discovered 
in  various  chulpas  and  tombs,  but  the  finding-place  of 
none  of  them  was  recorded,  and  as  they  are  ugly,  and  of 
little  interest  in  themselves,  three-quarters  of  their  value 
was  thus  destroyed.  As  with  these  gold  ornaments,  so  it 
is  generally  with  Inca  antiquities  of  all  kinds.  There  is  no 
record  with  any  of  them  of  the  circumstances  of  their  dis- 
covery. Hence,  though  by  the  kindness  of  friends  rather 
than  by  my  own  exertions  I  was  able  to  bring  away  a  few 
quite  fine  examples  of  pottery,  I  cannot  say  in  any  case 
where  they  were  found. 

The  first  pot  that  came  into  my  hands  was  one  in  the 
form  of  an  animal  of  the  cat  tribe — I  suppose  a  puma.  It 
was  evidently  intended  by  fate  to  be  a  companion  for  the 
Egyptian  bronze  cats,  and,  in  fact,  they  have  now  lived 
peacefully  together  for  many  years.  Only  once  have  I 
heard  them  caterwauling  in  the  night,  and  even  then  I  may 
have  been  mistaken.  My  greatest  prize,  however,  was  a 
pot  that  is  to  all  intents  a  plain  portrait  bust,  but  for  the 
addition  of  a  spout-handle  at  the  back  of  the  head.  These 
portrait  pots  of  superior  quahty  are  rare,  and  belong  to 
the  best  period  of  their  school.  The  finest  I  ever  saw 
belonged  in  1898  to  Mr.  Clay,  at  Lima,  and  it  was  he  who 


96  FROM  INDIA  TO  PERU 


gave  me  mine.  Both  were  dug  up  on  the  same  sugar  estate 
in  Peru,  I  believe  near  Chimbote. 

The  only  other  Inca  antiquities  I  acquired  were  given 
to  me  in  Bolivia  by  gentlemen  who  had  been  made  kindly 
disposed  towards  me  by  my  ascent  of  the  great  sacred 
mountain  Illimani.  One  of  the  mementoes  of  that  climb 
was  a  tiny  bronze  object  of  axe-like  form,  with  a  human 
figure  rudely  modelled  on  it.  It  was  found  at  Cusco.  The 
other  object  came  from  the  same  place.  It  is  of  wood,  and 
looks  as  though  it  had  been  cut  off  the  top  of  a  staff.  It 
represents  a  monkey,  squatting  on  a  base,  over  which  his 
tail  hangs  down  behind.  Never  was  monkey  squarer-built 
or  more  composed,  or  with  such  wide-opened  eyes,  or  such 
cocked-up  ears,  for  all  the  world  like  a  cat's.  He  holds  a 
human  head  in  his  teeth  by  the  hair,  and  steadies  it  with 
both  hands.  Age  has  endowed  the  wood  with  an  iron-like 
hardness,  but  who  made  it,  or  when,  or  what  it  means, 
heaven  only  knows. 

In  the  southernmost  part  of  the  South  American  conti- 
nent, where  I  likewise  went  a-climbing,  the  only  antiquities 
I  came  upon  were  Fuegians  actually  dwelling  in  the  kitchen- 
midden  stage  of  the  Stone  Age.  They  were  as  fat  as 
porpoises,  and  I  saw  them  sitting  in  apparent  comfort  in  an 
open  canoe,  with  the  snow  falling  and  melting  upon  the 
rotund  surfaces  of  their  naked  bodies.  They  hunt  the 
shores  of  the  Fuegian  archipelago  for  bottles  thrown  over- 
board bypassing  steamers,  and  out  of  fragments  of  these  they 
fashion  arrow-heads,  as  neolithic  man  fashioned  them  out  of 
flints.  Darwin  once  collected  a  live  Fuegian,  but  he  was  a 
troublesome  acquisition.  I  had  no  desire  to  follow  even  so 
distinguished  an  example. 


CHAPTER  VIIL 


GREEK  AND   ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES 

THE  claim  is  now  often  made  that  in  England  more 
art  treasures  of  the  past  lie  hid  awaiting  identification 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  world.  The  most  important 
recent  addition  to  the  recognised  sculptures  of  the  Par- 
thenon was  a  fine  fragment  discovered  on  a  rockery  at  Colne 
Park,  Essex.  I  myself  found  employed  as  an  ornament  in  an 
English  garden  one  of  the  splendid  wind-blown  acanthus 
capitals  made  to  the  order  of  Theodoric  the  Ostrogoth 
for  a  church  at  Ravenna,  and  afterward  used  in  Italy  as  a 
well-head.*  The  old  gardens  of  England  doubtless  possess 
a  still  unsuspected  treasure  of  such  objects.  I  have  a 
drawing  of  a  very  elaborately  sculptured  mediaeval  cross- 
head,  described  as  having  been  made  from  a  stone  in  the 
rockery  of  a  Rectory  garden.  Several  fonts  of  great 
antiquity  have  been  rescued  from  pig-sties,  farmyards,  and 
the  like  unkenned  localities.  The  only  antique  marble  bust 
which  it  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  acquire  was  bought 
out  of  a  back  garden  at  Cambridge.  The  owner  thought 
he  remembered  to  have  been  told  by  his  father  that  some 
old  don  brought  it  home  from  Italy  a  long  time  ago.  The 
story  sounds  quite  eighteenth  century.  Dons  nowadays 
seldom  come  home  from  their  holidays  with  a  marble  bust 
in  their  luggage. 

*  See  Country  Ldfe^  October  nth,  1913. 

G 


98      GREEK  AND  ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES 


The  bust  in  question  is  of  Greek  marble.  The  head  has 
evidently  been  broken  off  at  the  root  of  the  neck  from  a 
full-length  figure.  Its  left  shoulder  droops  slightly,  and 
there  is  a  corresponding  inclination  of  the  neck,  with  the 
head  somewhat  turned  toward  an  erect  position.  The  frag- 
ment is  inserted  into  draped  shoulders  supported  by  a  base, 
carved  in  late  Renaissance  style  out  of  a  coarser  and  greyer 
marble  than  the  head.  The  waving  locks  of  hair  enframing 
the  forehead  are  deeply  grooved  by  means  of  a  drill  in  a 
manner  characteristic  of  the  time  of  the  Antonines.  The 
crown  of  the  head  is  merely  roughed  out,  and  was  originally 
surmounted  by  some  kind  of  head-dress,  probably  of  metal, 
The  stump  of  the  pin  which  fixed  it  remains  embedded  in 
the  marble.  I  have  not  found  it  possible  to  point  to  any 
definite  original  from  which  this  copy  has  been  taken.  At 
a  first  glance  the  type  appears  to  go  back  to  the  fifth 
century,  but  the  soft,  rounded  oval  of  the  face,  the  massive 
neck,  the  small,  slightly  opened  mouth,  and  the  form  of 
the  eyes,  are  all  features  characteristic  rather  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  Scopas,  and  in  particular  of  the  Niobide  group. 
Probably  the  Roman  copyist  had  some  original  by  an 
eclectic  sculptor  before  him.  The  Barberini  Hera  is  nearest 
to  the  required  type.  Furtwangler  attributes  the  original 
of  that  to  Alkamenes.  Helbig's  idea  is  that  it  was  the  work 
of  some  Hellenistic  artist  of  about  the  second  century  B.C., 
who  combined  fifth  and  fourth  century  types  of  head  and 
body.  In  these  misty  regions  of  conjecture  as  to  copies  of 
lost  originals  by  unidentifiable  artists,  who  derived  their 
style  by  imitation  of  the  styles  and  traditions  of  earlier 
artists,  whose  work  in  their  turn  is  only  known  from  vague 
descriptions  and  probably  inaccurate  copies,  it  seems  to  me 
that  definite  assertions  by  one  who  makes  no  claim  to  be  a 


ANTIQUE  BUST 
Total  height  27  in. 


Facing  p.  98 


A  PORPHYRY  BUST 


99 


specialist  in  these  matters  may  be  spared.  The  head  has 
never  been  exhibited,  nor  have  I  had  the  advantage  of  dis- 
cussing it  with  any  of  the  recognised  major  authorities  on 
ancient  sculpture. 

Far  more  attractive  than  this  marble  bust  is  another  on 
a  smaller  scale,  sculptured  in  that  most  refractory  of  all 
stones — porphyry.  It  represents  a  youth,  as  it  were,  a 
young  David,  with  head  erect  on  a  long,  slender  neck,  the 
smooth  surface  of  the  finely  formed  face  and  delicate 
features  being  set  off  delightfully  by  the  loosely  flowing 
hair,  which,  in  contrast  to  the  finish  of  the  face,  is  only 
roughly  blocked  out.  It  is  the  veiry  incarnation  of  high 
breeding  and  youthful  purity,  like  some  youth  beloved  of 
Leonardo* — alert,  confident,  and  keen,  without  forebodings 
and  without  regrets. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  achievements  of  those 
earhest  Egyptians  of  whose  work  we  possess  survivals  was 
the  discovery  how  to  work  the  hardest  rocks  supplied  to 
them  by  nature  in  the  neighbourhood  of  their  homes.  Bowls 
and  dishes  of  granite,  diorite,  and  other  hard  stones  in  con- 
siderable number  have  been  found  in  tombs  of  the  earliest 
dynasties,  not  roughly  hammered  out,  but  truly  and  ex- 
quisitely wrought  to  a  high  degree  of  finish.  Already  by  the 
time  of  the  Middle  Empire  magnificent  monumental 
statues  were  made,  and  the  traditions  of  this  art 
were  maintained  thenceforward.  Who  that  has  beheld  it 
can  ever  forget  the  majesty  of  the  great  Ramses  II.  at 
Turin  ?  It  is  an  error  to  say,  with  Helbig  and  others, 
that  fine  modelling  is  not  as  possible  of  attainment  in 
porphyry  and  diorite  as  in  marble,  and  that,  therefore, 

*  A  drawing  in  the  Louvre  attributed  to  Boltraffio  (Braun,  No.  176), 
might  almost  have  been  suggested  by  this  bust  seen  in  profile. 


100    GREEK  AND  ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES 


sculpture  in  the  hardest  rocks  must  be  inferior  in  quality. 
Fine  modelling  is  possible  in  any  material,  but  not  the 
same  kind  of  fineness.  The  Ramses  11.  is  finely  modelled 
in  a  style  proper  to  diorite.  The  Hermes  of  Praxiteles  is 
finely  modelled  in  a  style  proper  to  marble.  To  model 
porphyry  as  though  it  were  marble  would  not  be  to  model 
it  finely.  Egyptian  sculptors  preserved  throughout  the 
whole  course  of  their  history  a  complete  understanding  of 
how  to  work  the  hardest  stones,  and  of  what  could  properly 
be  done  with  them.  In  the  Hellenistic  period  the  workshops 
of  Alexandria  turned  out  both  porphyry  and  basalt  sculp- 
ture, whilst  in  early  Roman  Imperial  days  attempts  were 
made  to  introduce  a  taste  for  objects  of  this  class  into 
Rome.  It  was  not,  however,  till  the  time  of  the  Antonines 
that  sculpture  in  the  hardest  stones  became  popular. 
Marble  heads  were  then  fitted  into  coloured  shoulders,  and 
draperies  were  imitated  in  variegated  polished  stones.  It 
was  a  vulgar  and  unseemly  degradation  of  the  ancient 
dignified  art  of  Egypt,  and  only  had  vogue  for  a  short 
time,  as  a  fashion  among  the  wealthy  rather  than  a  taste 
among  the  refined.  Finally,  in  the  fourth  century,  a  return 
was  made  to  the  traditions  of  a  better  period,  and  a  certain 
number  of  notable  portrait-figures  and  sarcophagi  were 
turned  out  by  Alexandrian  craftsmen.  Such  are  the  figures 
in  the  Museums  of  Ravenna  and  Cairo,  and  the  portrait 
groups  in  the  Vatican  and  on  the  outside  of  the  Treasury  of 
St.  Mark's  at  Venice.  Soon  afterwards  the  art  of  working 
porphyry  fell  into  neglect,  though  mediaeval  craftsmen  were 
still  able  to  cut  sections  of  antique  columns  and  work  them 
into  mosaic  pavements.  The  thirteenth-century  porphyry 
sarcophagi  of  Frederick  II.  and  other  members  of  his  house 
must  also  have  been  contemporary  work.     Later  on, 


PORPHYRY  BUST 


Facing  p.  loo 


A  FORGOTTEN  CRAFT  loi 


however,  the  art  of  shaping  porphyry  seems  to  have  fallen 
into  total  oblivion.  Vasari  (Milanesi  edition,  L,  p.  109) 
relates  how  efforts  were  made  by  Leon  Battista  Alberti  and 
others  to  rediscover  the  lost  craft,  and  how,  at  last,  in 
1555,  success  was  attained  in  fashioning  a  large  fountain 
basin  in  porphyry  for  the  Grand  Duke,  and  presently  there- 
after in  certain  portrait  bas-reliefs. 

This  brief  resume  of  the  history  of  porphyry  sculpture 
proves  clearly  enough  that  the  beautiful  little  porphyry 
bust  of  a  lad  in  my  possession  is  not,  as  I  at  first  supposed 
it  to  be,  a  Florentine  work  of  the  fifteenth  century,  because 
no  one  alive  in  the  fifteenth  century  knew  how  to  sculpture 
porphyry  at  all.  If  it  recalls  in  some  degree  the  David  of 
Verrocchio,  it  is  because  it  was  antique  work  of  this  type 
that  Verrocchio  endeavoured  to  rival  when  he  modelled  the 
David.  The  workshop  from  which  this  bust  came  was  not 
in  Florence,  but  in  Alexandria,  and  the  traditions  it  incor- 
porates are  not  Tuscan,  but  Hellenistic. 

By  a  curious  coincidence  the  crown  of  the  head  of  this 
bust,  like  that  of  the  marble  bust  previously  described,  was 
originally  covered  with  some  kind  of  metal  head-dress,  and 
the  stump  of  the  rivet  that  held  it  firm  here  likewise  remains 
em_bedded  in  the  stone.  Probably  a  metal  wreath  sur- 
mounted the  rich  ring  of  curly  hair  that  so  charmingly  sets 
off  the  severe  form  of  the  face.  Careful  examination  shows 
a  number  of  polished,  metal-stained  spots  remaining  on  the 
stone  where  the  head-dress  used  to  rub  against  it.  The 
pedestal  is  a  modern  addition.  The  only  injuries  are  a  large 
chip  at  the  root  of  the  neck  in  front  and  a  breakage  that  cuts 
right  through  the  neck  and  the  thick  mass  of  hair  behind, 
dividing  the  whole  stone  in  half.  This  breakage  may  have 
been  produced  by  the  sculptor  himself.    As  to  the  history 


I02    GREEK  AND  ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES 


of  the  head  before  it  came  into  my  hands,  I  know  nothing, 
except  that  it  was  acquired  in  Italy  * 

Judging  from  the  rapid  increase  in  the  departments  of 
classical  antiquities  in  American  and  other  museums,  the 
supply  of  ancient  sculpture  obtainable  has  by  no  means 
come  to  an  end.  The  sale  of  such  objects  is,  however, 
mainly  carried  on  sub  rosa^  despite  the  opposition  of  Govern- 
ments, and  it  does  not  become  me  here  to  relate  what  little 
I  may  have  been  told  about  it  Chances  have  now  and 
again  come  in  my  way,  as,  for  instance,  many  years  ago  at 
Alexandretta,  when  a  person  of  ill-defined  profession  visited 
me  on  a  steamer  anchored  in  the  bay,  and  produced  photo- 
graphs of  some  half-dozen  marble  sculptures  he  had  for 
sale.  They  were  all,  he  said,  safely  out  of  reach  of  the 
Turkish  authorities,  and  he  named  a  French  port  where  I 
could  see  them.  But  what  is  an  ordinary  householder  to 
do  with  life-size  marble  figures }  I  was  obliged  to  decline 
to  become  their  possessor.  A  few  years  later  I  saw  one  of 
them  comfortably  housed  in  the  fine  gallery  of  the  Ny  Carls- 
berg  Glyptotek  at  Copenhagen.  It  is  a  high,  almost  round 
relief,  representing  Attis,  and  came  from  Cyzicus,  where  it 
appears  to  have  adorned  the  side-post  of  a  doorway,  the 
pendant  to  it  being  a  Cybele.t  There  is  a  similarly  attached 
figure,  also  from  Cyzicus,  at  Liverpool 

In  Smyrna  I  once  had  a  notable  afternoon's  entertain- 
ment. That  was  in  the  days  when  the  supply  of  genuine 
and  fine  terra-cottas  had  not  ceased,  though  the  number  of 
excellent  forgeries  put  into  circulation  was  already  very 

*  A  curly-headed  youth  or  maiden,  wearing  a  close-fitting  cap,  such 
as  might  possibly  have  been  the  completion  likewise  of  the  porphyry 
bust,  is  depicted  in  a  well-known  painting  within  a  circular  medallion 
found  at  Herculaneum,  and  now  in  the  Naples  Museum. 

f  See  Arndt's  "Catalogue  of  the  N.C.  Glyptotek,"  pi.  144  and  text. 


FORGED  TERRA-COTTAS 


103 


large.  Smyrna  was  supposed  to  be  a  centre  of  the  in- 
dustry. Examination  of  one  or  two  dealers'  stores  there 
showed  me  that  a  market  of  forgeries  must  be  near  at  hand, 
and  I  eagerly  desired  to  run  it  to  earth.  As  if  anxious  to 
obtain  a  large  number  of  terra-cottas  for  some  foreign 
market,  I  intimated  that  I  did  not  greatly  care  whether 
they  were  genuine  or  not.  After  much  negotiation  and 
going  from  place  to  place,  ultimately  I  was  taken  to  what 
appeared  to  be  the  workshop  of  an  Italian  plasterer.  The 
front  room  was  full  of  plaster  casts  of  modern  works.  Behind 
that  was  the  moulding-room,  and  further  back,  across  a 
little  courtyard,  what  proved  to  be  the  headquarters  of  the 
local  Tanagra-forgery.  Here  I  was  shown  a  number  of 
genuine  antique  moulds  which  had  been  dug  up,  some  in 
Greece,  others  in  Asia  Minor.  There  were  also  many  modern 
moulds  taken  from  genuine  originals.  The  clay  used  came 
from  the  neighbourhood,  and  was  believed  to  be  the  very 
clay  which  the  ancient  potters  had  used  over  two  thousand 
years  ago.  It  was  thus  easy  for  a  skilful  workman  to  cast 
and  bake  figurines  which  were  practically  identical  with  the 
antiques  they  were  intended  to  be  taken  for.  These  new 
figurines,  fresh  from  the  oven,  were  delightful  objects,  but 
I  was  not  permitted  to  acquire  any  of  them.  The  next 
stage  was  generally  to  break  them  up.  A  large  trade  was 
done  in  heads,  arms  and  legs,  backs,  etc.  Very  few  even 
approximately  complete  figures  or  groups  were  allowed  to 
go  forth.  The  best  were  carefully  painted,  and  then  "  aged  " 
in  a  fashion  too  disgusting  to  be  described.  Armed  with 
the  knowledge  thus  acquired,  I  was  better  able  to  distinguish 
genuine  from  false  thereafter,  and  I  succeeded  in  obtaining 
out  of  Smyrna  and  Athens  three  perfect  figures.  One  was 
a  delightful  winged  Eros,  with  traces  of  paint  on  the  deli- 


I04    GREEK  AND  ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES 


cately  modelled  body.  He  was  skilfully  constructed,  so 
that  he  stands  firmly  balanced  on  one  foot  and  just  a  toe  of 
the  other.  Even  his  little  fingers  are  almost  complete. 
Round  his  head  is  a  floral  wreath.  The  two  others  are 
ladies  fully  draped,  and  each  holding  a  fan — a  common  type 
at  Tanagra.  One  of  these  retained  its  old  surface  in  very 
good  preservation,  and  I  was  particularly  proud  of  it.  Many 
years  later  I  was  showing  it  to  an  expert,  and  to  my  sur- 
prise he  said  it  looked  like  a  forgery.  I  examined  it  closely, 
and  lo!  the  surface  was  wholly  new — every  trace  of  the 
old  coloration  was  gone.  Domestic  investigation  at  length 
brought  forth  an  explanation.  One  day  while  I  was  in 
India  the  thing  had  been  moved,  and  broken.  The  frag- 
ments were  taken  to  a  mender,  who  joined  them  together, 
and  washed  the  whole  over  to  hide  the  breaks.  The  figure 
was  put  back  into  its  glass  case  with  the  others,  and  years 
passed  before  I  chanced  to  notice  what  had  been  done. 

At  Athens  it  was  easy  enough  to  buy  antiquities,  but 
difficult  to  get  them  out  of  the  country.  While  I  was  con- 
sidering a  small  Greek  stele,  and  wondering  how,  if  I 
bought  it,  I  could  get  it  away,  the  representative  of  a 
German  museum  carried  it  off  between  sunset  and  sunrise. 
The  dealer  was  really  a  delightful  person.  As  usual,  I  was 
in  an  impecunious  state  at  the  end  of  a  prolonged  journey. 
There  were  a  number  of  things  I  wanted  to  carry  away — 
an  archaic  bronze  priestess  as  a  mirror  handle,  some  vases, 
a  fine  Albanian  belt  in  silver  filigree  and  enamel,  and  some 
other  trifles.  I  told  the  man  if  he  would  keep  them  for  me 
I  would  buy  them  three  months  later,  and  he  could  send 
them.  He  agreed ;  but  added  that  it  would  save  him  a  lot 
of  trouble  if  I  would  take  them  with  me  and  send  him  the 
money  three  months  later.    I  had  no  objection.  He 


A  CONFIDING  DEALER  105 


vanished  into  an  inner  room,  and  came  out  with  a  paper 
in  his  hand.  This  proved  to  be  a  receipted  bill  for  the 
things.  I  said,  "  This  is  not  a  bill,  but  a  receipt."  "  I  know 
it,"  he  replied.  "  IVe  been  thinking  that  when  you  send  me 
the  money  I  shall  have  to  send  you  the  receipt ;  and  it  may 
go  wrong  in  the  post ;  and  then  you'll  have  to  write  and 
say  you  have  not  got  it,  and  I  shall  have  to  write  again. 
Now  if  you  take  the  receipt  with  you  all  that  trouble  will 
be  saved  for  both  of  us  " ! 

Cyprus  also  was  a  place  where  genuine  antiquities  of 
many  kinds  were  easy  to  acquire.  When  I  was  there, 
Syrian  glass  of  early  Roman  Imperial  date  was  obtainable 
in  considerable  quantities,  but  the  difficulty  was  to  bring  it 
safely  home,  so  tender  was  the  surface,  so  frail  the  fabric. 
Most  of  this  glass,  recovered  from  ancient  tombs,  was 
originally  colourless ;  but  time  has  endowed  much  of  it 
with  a  brilliant  iridescence,  sometimes  of  extraordinary 
beauty.  I  carried  off  several  examples,  and  actually  took 
them  home  in  my  hand  to  London,  where  they  arrived  in 
safety.  The  iridescence  does  not  seem  to  have  altered  in 
any  way  during  upwards  of  twenty  years,  but  it  is  not  so 
bright,  and  never  was,  as  that  on  a  broken  fragment  of  a 
modern  wine-bottle  which  was  dug  the  other  day  out  of  a 
filled-in  part  of  the  moat  at  Allington. 

It  is  scarcely  worth  while  relating  other  such  small 
adventures  among  Levantine  dealers.  The  really  sporting 
way  to  acquire  antiques  is  to  excavate  for  them,  and  no 
chance  of  so  doing  has  yet  fallen  to  my  lot  except  in  Kent. 
There  I  have  emptied  filled-in  moats  and  dug  up  the 
foundations  of  ancient  buildings,  but  discovered  nothing 
older  than  George  III.  ha'pence.  Outside  the  north  wall  of 
AlHngton  Castle  there  does  indeed  remain,  undiscovered 


io6    GREEK  AND  ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES 


as  yet,  a  very  precious  buried  treasure.  This  is  nothing 
less  than  a  Golden  Pig,  which  has  been  hidden  there  from 
a  remote  antiquity.  The  trouble  with  that,  however,  is  that 
the  man  who  finds  it  thereupon  always  "  softly  and  silently 
vanishes  away,  and  never  is  heard  of  again."  The  last  time 
that  happened  was  some  fifty  years  ago.  Currant-bushes 
then  grew  on  the  site,  and  a  certain  labourer  was  seen 
hoeing  among  them.  He  has  never  been  beheld  since.  The 
conclusion  is  obvious.  He  found  the  Golden  Pig!  The 
question  remains :  did  he  take  it  away  ? 


CHAPTER  IX. 


A  FIND   OF  GIORGIONES 

IN  the  summer  of  1903  we  made  an  extensive  motoring 
tour  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  France,  and 
wherever  we  went  we  searched  the  antiquity  shops 
with  patient  thoroughness.  It  was  not  till  we  reached 
Biarritz  that  we  began  to  strike  a  fertile  field ;  but  there 
and  thereabouts  many  good  things  were  on  sale  which  had 
drifted  over  out  of  Spain.  We  made  a  certain  number  of 
acquisitions,  under  quite  ordinary  circumstances,  which  it 
would  be  tedious  to  linger  over ;  but  one  adventure  is 
worth  describing  at  length. 

In  those  days  motor-cars  were  not  the  safe  and  sound 
means  of  locomotion  they  are  now  supposed  to  be.  Ours, 
at  any  rate,  perhaps  through  our  own  fault,  was  always 
providing  us  with  surprises,  especially  after  it  had  collided 
with  a  cow  somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bayonne. 
The  cow  did  not  mind,  but  our  car  did,  and  its  internal 
mechanism  was  never  quite  the  same  again.  This  delayed 
us  at  Biarritz.  I  had  a  passionate  desire  to  go  to  St.  Jean 
de  Luz,  but  next  day  something  occurred  to  prevent  our 
start,  and  took  us  to  the  garage  instead.  At  last,  after 
lunch  the  third  day,  we  succeeded  in  starting,  and  gaily  ran 
about  five  miles.  Then  bang! — a  tyre  burst,  and  we  had 
to  halt  and  put  on  another.    That  punctured,  and  so  did 


io8  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 


a  third.  I  was  for  turning  back.  I  said,  "  We  are  not 
intended  to  get  to  St.  Jean  de  Luz.  It's  just  as  well  to 
bow  to  the  decrees  of  Fate  first  as  last."  But  my  wife 
said,  "  No.  YouVe  had  a  queer  and  apparently  insensate 
desire  to  go  to  this  place,  and  go  we  must.  There's  some- 
thing for  us  there,  and  weVe  just  got  to  go  and  get  it." 
So  we  travelled  slowly  on,  with  only  some  perilously  old 
tubes  on  our  wheels,  expecting  every  moment  that  our  last 
tyre  would  burst  and  we  should  be  left  stranded.  That 
did  not  happen.  We  presently  reached  St.  Jean  de  Luz 
and  proceeded  to  investigate  the  dealers'  shops.  There 
were  one  or  two  in  the  main  street,  and  they  contained 
nothing  worth  looking  at.  I  said,  "  Let  us  have  tea  and 
go  back  to  the  hotel."  My  wife  said,  "  No ;  there  must 
be  another  shop.  I  am  certain  there  is  something  for  us 
in  this  place."  So  we  turned  down  a  side  street  and  came 
out  on  a  flat  expanse  leading  off  to  the  sea.  "What 
nonsense  it  is,"  I  said,  "  to  be  looking  for  anticas  here ! 
You  might  as  well  dig  for  them  in  the  sand."  An  old 
fisherwoman,  or  someone  of  that  class  appeared,  and  I  was 
bidden  to  ask  her  whether  there  was  not  an  antica-shop 
hereabouts.  The  notion  of  asking  her  seemed  to  me 
absurd.  What  could  an  old  fisherwoman  know  of  such 
things,  and  who  on  earth  would  dream  of  keeping  an  antica- 
shop  in  such  a  neighbourhood — off  the  track  of  visitors  and 
in  the  midst  of  a  fishing  population  ?  However,  I  am 
nothing  if  not  docile,  so  I  pursued  the  old  woman  and  asked 
my  question.  "  Yes ! "  she  replied.  "  Just  round  that 
corner  there  is  a  house  where  they  sell  all  sorts  of  old 
things ;  you  will  have  no  difficulty  in  finding  it."  Round 
the  corner  we  went,  and  there  was  a  house  with  the  door 
open.    Through  it  we  could  see  the  ghtter  of  brass,  the 


AT  ST.  JEAN  DE  LUZ  109 


chaos  of  old  furniture,  and  pictures  on  the  walls.  I  entered 
amidst  the  usual  rubbish,  and  was  about  to  go  out  again  and 
say  there  was  nothing,  when  I  saw  an  open  door  at  the  end 
of  the  room,  and  through  it  I  could  look  into  a  room 
beyond.  My  attention  was  instantly  arrested  by  two 
pictures  hanging  high  up  on  a  wall  at  the  farthest  end  of 
that.  I  did  not  move  or  speak,  but  kept  the  corner  of  my 
eye  on  those  pictures  while  occupied  with  objects  close  at 
hand.  The  pictures  were  quite  far  away,  and  the  light  was 
poor,  but  there  was  no  doubt  we  were  now  close  to  some- 
thing very  good.  I  went  out  to  my  wife  and  said,  "  In  the 
far  corner  of  the  second  room  are  two  Venetian  pictures 
which  just  might  be  Carpaccios.  Don't  seem  to  look  at 
them,  but  come  in  and  let's  look  at  everything  else." 

When  we  came  near  them  I  felt  my  heart  thumping 
within  me  like  a  piston.  I  whispered  that  they  were  early 
Giorgiones,  and  that  we  must  certainly  buy  them  at  any 
price.  Finally,  we  had  them  taken  down  and  placed  in 
our  hands,  one  after  the  other,  the  last  things  we  looked 
at.  It  is  hard  under  such  circumstances  to  hide  one's 
emotions,  but  we  succeeded.  A  price  was  quoted — thank 
goodness,  moderate.  The  purchase  was  made  then  and 
there.  In  a  few  minutes  we  were  back  in  our  car  and  away 
for  Biarritz  as  hard  as  we  could  go.  Somehow  it  seemed 
as  though  punctures  were  no  longer  to  be  expected.  None 
occurred,  at  any  rate,  and  we  were  able  to  travel  fast ;  but 
the  hour  that  intervened  before  we  could  reach  our  rooms 
and  examine  the  new  treasures  at  leisure  and  with  minute 
attention  seemed  like  a  long  afternoon.  It  was  past  mid- 
night before  we  had  rejoiced  enough  to  be  able  to  think  of 
sleep. 

The  two  panels  were  not  in  the  best  state  of  preserva- 


no  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 


tion.    One  was  cracked  right  across,  and  the  paint  had 
begun  to  "  bubble  off  "  both  ;  but  all  the  figures  were  intact, 
and  the  damage  was  confined  to  relatively  unimportant 
parts  of  the  painting.    I  forget  whether  it  was  Mr.  Herbert 
Cook  or  Mr.  Robert  Ross  who  first  told  me  the  meaning  of 
the  subjects,  the  "  Finding  of  Paris  "  and  "  Paris  being  put 
out  to  Nurse."    At  any  rate,  it  was  Mr.  Cook  who 
humorously  described  them  as  "  This  Way  to  the  Baby  " 
and  "  Isn't  he  a  Beauty  ?  "    In  the  first,  the  child  lies  on  a 
white  cloth  on  the  ground  at  the  foot  of  some  rocks  near  a 
stream ;  a  man  is  pointing  him  out  to  two  others,  and  two 
more  are  following  them  over  a  foot-bridge.    In  the  middle 
distance  is  a  village  and  a  castle-crowned  hill,  and  across 
the  background  are  blue  hills  beneath  a  blue  sky.  The 
figures  are  all  in  brightly  tinted  costumes,  and  the  whole  is 
a  delightful  pattern  of  brilliant  colours.    By  what  is  per- 
haps merely  a  curious  coincidence,  the  child  is  almost 
identical,  though  in  reverse  (as  if  seen  in  a  mirror),  with  a 
child  drawn  in  outline  by  Diirer  on  a  page  of  sketches* 
made  by  him  in  Venice  in  1495 — probably  the  very  year 
in  which  Giorgione  painted  this  picture  likewise  in  Venice. 
Certainly  Diirer  "diirerised"  his  drawing,  as  he  did  in 
every  case  when  he  sketched  an  Italian  original ;  but  I  find 
it  difficult  to  believe  that  there  is  no  connection  between 
the  two. 

In  the  second  picture  a  woman  receives  the  child  from 
one  of  a  group  of  three  men.  Further  back,  two  others  are 
seated  talking,  near  a  herd  of  kine.  There  is  again  a 
village  in  the  middle  distance  and  blue  hills  behind.  I 
have  never  wavered  in  the  assurance  that  these  pictures 

*  The  drawing  is  in  the  Uflizi  and  photographed  by  Braun,  No.  962. 


Facing  p.  no 


TWO  GIORGIONES 


III 


were  painted  by  the  youthful  Giorgione  and  no  other. 
Some  of  the  figures  are  actually  the  same  models  as  those 
employed  by  him  in  works  universally  accepted  as  his, 
but  the  palette  is  his  likewise,  and  so  are  a  quantity  of 
little  tricks  of  design  and  of  technique,  as  well  as  certain 
weaknesses  too  tedious  to  set  down  in  long-winded  detail  * 
The  dealer  from  whom  I  bought  the  pictures  stated  that 
they  had  been  in  the  Duke  of  Ossuna's  collection,  and  this 
statement  is  verified  by  the  seal  on  the  back  of  each.  They 
likewise  had  written  labels  bearing  the  name  of  Carpaccio, 
and  the  seal  of  the  Venetian  Academy,  doubtless  impressed 
when  permission  was  given  to  export  them.  Their  last 
Italian  owner  was  revealed  as  follows. 

By  a  strange  coincidence,  just  when  I  was  finding  these 
pictures  at  St.  Jean  de  Luz,  Mons.  Ugo  Monneret  de 
Villard  was  enquiring  for  them  in  Italy.  In  the  process 
of  preparing  his  book  on  Giorgione  t  he  had  examined  in 
the  Communal  Library  at  Verona  a  manuscript  catalogue  J 
of  the  Albarelli  collection,  entitled  "  Gabinetto  di  quadri 
o  raccolta  di  pezzi  originali  esistenti  in  Verona  presso  il 
sig.  Gio.  Albarelli,  disegnati  da  Romolo  Caliari,  con  illus- 
trazioni.  Verona,  1815."  In  this  volume  he  noticed  two 
carefully  made  outline  drawings  of  pictures  which  had  been 
attributed  to  Carpaccio,  but  which  he  had  no  difficulty  in 
recognising  as  compositions  by  Giorgione  in  his  early 

*  I  may  point  to  the  little  stones  in  the  foreground,  and  the  way 
they  are  painted ;  to  the  slender  rods  carried  by  some  of  the  men ;  to 
the  peculiar  cliff,  with  its  little  overhangs,  and  the  brown  vegetation 
on  it ;  to  the  attitudes  of  the  people  seated  on  the  ground ;  to  the 
peculiar  feet  of  the  men ;  and  to  the  drawing  of  the  figures,  especially 
of  the  man  seen  directly  from  behind. 

•f  "Giorgione  da  Castelfranco."  Studio  critico.  Bergamo,  1904. 
pp.  26  and  106. 

t  MS.,  1847,  CI.  Arti,  Ubic.  82.  6,  Busta  5. 


112  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 


period.  After  his  book  was  already  printed,  but  before  it 
was  issued,  Mons.  de  Villard  saw  the  photographs  of  the 
pictures  themselves,  which  were  published  in  the  Burling- 
ton Magazine^  and  thus  was  enabled  to  insert  in  time  an 
extra  page,  with  copies  of  the  reproductions  facing  the 
reproductions  of  the  drawings,  and  a  note  which  runs  as 
follows — 

"  Nel  numero  di  Novembre,  1904,  del  Burlington  Maga- 
zine, H.  Cook  annunciava  di  aver  scoperti  nella  Collezione 
di  S.  Martin  Conway  due  quadri  che  egli  attribuisce  al 
Giorgione.  Tah  opere  non  sarebbero  altro  che  le  due  tele 
una  volta  alia  raccolta  Albarelli  in  Verona,  e  come  si  parla 
a  pag.  106  e  di  cui  due  disegni  sono  riprodotti  a  pag.  26-27 
del  presente  volume.  La  scoperta,  posteriore  alia  stampa 
del  volume,  mi  obbliga  ad  aggiungere  questa  nota, 
indicando  che  io  credo  taJi  opere  non  le  primissime  del 
maestro  di  Castelfranco,  ma  posteriori  al  quadro  degli 
Uffizi  ed  air  Allegoria  della  National  Gallery." 

It  happened,  also,  that  at  this  very  time  Mr.  Herbert 
Cook  was  bringing  out  a  revised  edition  of  his  Giorgione 
(London,  1904),  and  its  pages  were  already  printed  off. 
Knowing  his  interest  in  the  great  Venetian  master,  I  made 
haste  to  show  him  the  panels  as  soon  as  they  arrived  in 
London,  and  he  not  only  at  once  published  them  in  the 
Burlington  Magazine  (November,  1904,  p.  156),  but  felt 
obliged  to  insert  an  extra  leaf  into  his  book,  with  the 
following  note : — 

"  As  the  second  edition  of  this  book  goes  to  press  comes 
the  announcement  of  the  discovery  and  acquisition  by  Sir 
Martin  Conway  of  two  pictures  which  appear  to  be  by 
none  other  than  Giorgione  himself.    Not  only  so,  but,  from 


THE  OPINIONS  OF  EXPERTS  113 


the  nature  of  the  subjects  represented  and  the  style  of 
painting,  these  panels  would  seem  to  have  formed  the  last 
two  of  a  series^  of  which  '  The  Birth  of  Paris '  was  the  first 
portion.  '  The  Discovery  by  the  Shepherds  of  the  Young 
Paris '  and  '  The  Handing  Him  over  to  Nurse '  naturally 
complete  the  story,  of  which  the  first  scene  is  given  in  the 
engraving  (referred  to  at  p.  147),  whilst  the  statement  of 
the  Anonimo  that  the  'Birth  of  Paris'  was  one  of 
Giorgione's  early  works  is  amply  confirmed  by  the  style 
of  the  newly  found  paintings,  which  must  have  been  pro- 
duced by  a  very  youthful  hand.  Indeed,  there  is  every 
reason  to  hold  that  they  ante-date  the  little  pictures  in  the 
Uffizi,  and  thus  rank  as  the  earliest  known  works  of  the 
young  Giorgione." 

The  third  monograph  on  Giorgione,  which  has  been 
published  since  these  pictures  were  brought  to  light  again, 
is  that  by  Dr.  Ludwig  Justi  (Berlin,  1908,  2  vols.). 

Dr.  Justi,  after  citing  the  Albarelli  catalogue  and 
describing  the  pictures,  which  he  saw  before  they  had  been 
cleaned  and  restored,  continues :  "  Immerhin  erkennt  man 
noch  bei  starkem  Licht  das  Raffinement  der  Kostiimfarben, 
zart  gebrochene  Tone,  weit  entfernt  von  der  hiergegen 
harten  Art  der  Belliniani.  Die  '  Auffindung '  ist  (relativ) 
besser  erhalten,  man  hat  hier  auch  noch  einen  richtigen 
Eindruck  von  der  gesamtwirkung  ganz  hell,  gleichmassig 
in  den  Valeurs,  sehr  zart,  sehr  reich  in  den  Nuancierungen 
(z.B.  in  dem  ins  Violett  gehenden  Berg,  in  der  Blaugriinen 
Feme,  den  braunen  Hausern) ;  feinste  Lichteffekte  an  dem 
Rasen,  den  Hausern,  den  Baumen  des  Mittelgrundes. 
Insbesondere  bei  Kraftiger  Beleuchtung  kommt  diese 
Feinheit  und  dierser  Reichtum  der  Farbe  ausserordentlich 
heraus  und  iiberzeugt  den  Beschauer  das  es  sich  hier  um 
H 


114  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 

ein  werdendes  Genie  handelt,  einen  Koloristen  von  Gottes 
Gnaden,  der  nur  im  Zeichnen  und  Komponieren  noch 
nicht  gewandt  ist.  Das  Kind  ist  in  dem  eigentumlich 
rotlichen  Ton  modelliert  wie  auf  der  Epiphanie  und  den 
Bildern  bei  Lord  Allendale  und  Mr.  Benson.  In  der 
Bewegung  hat  das  Kind — worauf  mich  Sir  Martin 
aufmerksam  gemacht  hat — eine  nicht  voHige,  aber  doch 
auffallende  Ahnlichkeit  mit  dem  Kind  auf  Diirer's 
bekanntem  Studienblatt  in  den  Uffizien;  linke  Hand  und 
linker  Fuss  etwas  abweichend.  SoUte  man  danach  die 
^Auffindung'  und  ihr  Gegenstuck  um  1494  datieren? 
Giorgione  ware  1494  sechzehn  oder  siebzehn  Jarhre  alt 
gewesen ;  das  wiirde  zu  dem  Charakter  der  Conway- 
Tafeln  passen:  das  Koloristische  Genie  ist  schon  da, 
anderes  noch  anfangerhaft.  Freilich  ist  dies  nur  ein 
Kartenhaus  von  Scliissen,  da  die  Ubereinstimmung 
zwischen  Diirer  und  Giorgione  sich  ebensogut  aus  einem 
gemeinsamen  Vorbild  erklaren  kann."  * 

In  theory  it  seems  well  to  leave  a  picture  as  you  find 
it,  with  all  the  scars  of  time  visible  on  its  face ;  but  in 
practice,  when  the  paint  insists  on  parting  company  from 
the  panel  and  forms  dome-like  excrescences  resembling 
bubbles,  which  presently  crack  and  fall  off,  there  is  nothing 
for  it  but  to  call  in  the  aid  of  the  most  skilful  and 
experienced  restorer  that  can  be  found — in  other  words, 
Commendatore  Luigi  Cavenaghi,  of  Milan.  The  pictures 
under  discussion  received  what  I  may  call  "first  aid"  at 
the  hands  of  Mr.  Roger  Fry;  but  the  mischief  was  pro- 
gressive, and  had  to  be  radically  taken  in  hand  and  stopped 
once  for  all.    When  they  were  last  exhibited  at  the  winter 

*  Loc.  cit.,  Vol.  II.,  Nos.  18  and  19,  and  pp.  121,  122. 


CAVENAGHI  REVISITED  115 


exhibition  of  the  Budington  Fine  Arts  Club  in  1911-12* 
all  the  best  authorities  urged  me  to  have  the  work  put  in 
hand  without  delay,  and  the  two  panels  were  accordingly 
shipped  off  to  Cavenaghi's  without  further  delay.  Several 
months  later  we  followed  them  to  Milan.  It  was  a  joyous 
moment  when  we  found  ourselves  once  more  in  our  kind 
friend's  presence  and  saw  one  of  our  pictures  on  the  easel 
before  him. 

It  was  not  the  same  studio  to  which  we  had  been  taken 
just  twenty-five  years  before  by  Morelli,  but  it  was  the 
same  kind  welcome  that  greeted  us,  the  same  hand  that 
clasped  ours  in  friendly  greeting,  and  the  same  common 
interest  that  continued  to  unite  us.  Even  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  Cavenaghi  was  the  best  restorer  of  Italian 
pictures  in  the  world — so  Morelli  was  never  tired  of 
proclaiming,  and  so  all  men  agreed.  If  he  was  unrivalled 
in  1887,  it  is  easy  to  understand  at  what  height  of  pre- 
eminence he  now  stands,  with  the  added  knowledge  that 
comes  from  an  unexampled  experience  in  dealing  with  the 
most  precious  Itahan  paintings  in  the  world.  I  was 
naturally  more  than  a  little  anxious  to  know  what  a  restorer, 
through  whose  hands  several  works  by  Giorgione  had 
already  passed,  might  have  to  say  about  our  pictures,  for 
nothing  can  afford  so  good  an  opportunity  of  learning  the 
hand  of  a  master  as  the  necessity  of  deahng  so  intimately 
with  his  work  as  a  pre-eminent  restorer  like  Cavenaghi  is 
called  upon  to  do. 

By  an  admirable  stroke  of  good  fortune  there  was 
another  Giorgione  under  treatment  by  him  at  this  very 

*  The  pictures  in  their  then  condition  are  reproduced  by  photography 
in  the  illustrated  catalogue  published  by  the  club,  "Early  Venetian 
Pictures,"  London,  191 2. 


ii6  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 


time.  It  was  the  "  Orpheus  and  Eurydice  "  belonging  to 
the  Lochis  collection  in  the  Bergamo  Gallery.  This  panel, 
out  of  its  frame,  was  standing  on  an  easel  and  faced  us 
as  we  entered.  Of  course,  one  of  the  first  questions  I  asked 
was  whether  Cavenaghi  was  satisfied  that  our  pictures  were 
by  Giorgione.  He  replied,  "  Undoubtedly,"  and,  taking  up 
one  of  them  and  the  Bergamo  picture,  he  placed  them  close 
together  upon  a  single  easel,  remarking,  "You  see,  either 
of  those  might  be  a  piece  cut  out  of  the  other,"  so  absolutely 
did  they  agree  in  colour  scheme,  in  forms,  in  construction, 
and  in  all  the  elements  that  unite  to  make  a  picture.  It 
would  not  be  possible  for  anyone  in  presence  of  the  two, 
thus  displayed  together  before  him,  side  by  side,  without 
frames,  and  under  the  same  illumination,  to  doubt  for  one 
instant  that  both  had  been  painted  about  the  same  time 
by  the  same  artist,  using  the  same  colours,  similarly  mixed 
and  employed. 

It  occurred  to  me  at  that  moment  that  I  had  before  me 
a  concrete  example  of  what  the  labours  of  a  connoisseur 
are  directed  to  providing.  A  connoisseur  is  a  person  who, 
by  long  years  of  training  and  observation,  has  educated 
himself  to  retain  in  his  mind,  stored  up  and  able  to  be 
produced  at  will  to  his  internal  vision,  the  aspect  of  any 
one  of  a  multitude  of  works  of  art,  and  that  not  merely  in 
a  general  sense,  but  in  every  detail  of  colour,  texture,  form, 
and  chiaroscuro.  What  a  thoroughly  equipped  and 
competent  connoisseur  of  painting  can  do  is  to  call  up  a 
mental  image  of  any  one  of  a  great  number  of  pictures 
with  such  vividness  as  to  see  its  details  and  its  totality 
almost  as  clearly  as  if  the  picture  itself  were  before  him. 
When  he  comes  into  the  presence  of  a  picture  new  to  him 
he  must  be  able  to  place  beside  it,  before  his  mind's  eye 


SIDE  BY  SIDE 


117 


as  it  were,  on  the  same  easel,  any  other  picture  he  has  else- 
where seen  with  which  to  compare  it ;  in  fact,  to  be  able 
mentally  to  produce  just  such  a  comparison  as  we  had 
actually  and  visibly  before  us  at  that  moment. 

Anyone  who  has  the  capacity,  even  in  moderate  degree, 
of  estimating  the  character  and  quality  of  works  of  art  at 
all  can  tell  without  difficulty  whether  two  juxtaposed 
pictures  were  painted  in  the  same  style,  about  the  same 
time,  by  a  single  artist.  Not  even  an  angel  from  heaven 
could  persuade  a  man  whose  eyes  had  beheld  that  kind  of 
identity  that  it  did  not  exist.  Seeing  in  this  case  is 
ineradicable  conviction.  The  trouble  with  art  critics  is 
that  few  of  them  possess  any  such  capacity  of  vivid  memory 
as  is  requisite  to  produce  the  materials  for  the  kind  of 
comparison  that  anyone  can  make  who  has  the  two  objects 
to  be  compared  actually  present  side  by  side.  Such  a  gift 
is  of  the  rarest.  Those  who  lack  it  and  would  yet  pose  as 
art  critics  endeavour  to  supply  the  lack  of  vivid  pictorial 
memory  by  the  use  of  photographs.  Something  can, 
indeed,  be  accomplished  by  their  aid,  but  not  very  much. 
Where  the  characteristic  feature  common  to  two  works 
lies  in  the  possession  by  both  of  an  identical  colour  scheme, 
that  cannot  be  shown  by  any  photograph.  Hence  it  comes 
that  truly  magistral  judgment  on  such  matters  is  the 
prerogative  of  very  few  men  indeed.  Only  after  long  years 
of  trial,  by  contact,  discussion,  and  repeated  triumphant 
establishment  and  acceptation  of  their  opinion  by  their 
gifted  and  capable  fellows,  do  these  few  ultimately  attain 
such  authority.  An  admitted  master  of  this  type  was 
Morelli.  It  would  be  invidious  were  I  to  attempt  to  set 
down  the  names  of  living  masters  of  the  art,  but  at  any 
given  moment  they  are  known,  and  their  opinion,  if  never 


ii8  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 


to  be  regarded  as  papally  infallible,  is  always  weighty 
with  the  discerning  and  weightiest  with  the  best. 

From  St.  Jean  de  Luz  to  Malta  is  a  long  jump,  which 
I  must  invite  the  reader  to  take  with  me,  for  there  also,  by 
unusual  luck,  a  good  Venetian  picture  awaited  us.  We 
once  had  the  chance  to  land  there  for  a  few  hours  when 
returning  from  the  East.  After  seeing  the  usual  sights  I 
found  my  way  into  an  antiquity  shop.  The  dealer  greeted 
me  with  the  assurance  that  he  had  nothing  of  any 
consequence  to  sell,  as  H.R.H.  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh  had 
made  a  clean  sweep  of  all  his  best  things  the  day  before. 
We  had,  in  fact,  passed  his  ship  going  out  as  we  entered 
the  harbour.  The  effect  of  this  statement  upon  me  was 
the  comfortable  assurance  that  if  I  did  find  any  good  thing 
in  the  shop  its  quality  would  have  escaped  the  dealer's 
observation ;  and  so,  in  the  event,  it  proved.  Among  a 
number  of  trumpery  canvases  I  discovered  one  whose 
appeal  was  instantaneous.  Not  only  was  the  picture 
obviously  from  the  atelier  of  Tintoretto,  but  its  subject  was 
both  excessively  rare  and  very  charming.  It  depicts  the 
Virgin  as  a  young  maiden  before  her  marriage,  when, 
according  to  the  legend,  she  lived  apart  with  ,  other  holy 
virgins  in  the  Temple  precincts.  A  common  subject  with 
old  Christian  painters  is  the  Dedication  of  the  Virgin  in 
the  Temple  by  her  parents,  when  she  is  shown  leaving 
them  and  going  up  the  Temple  steps,  the  High  Priest 
waiting  to  receive  her  at  the  top.  Titian's  famous 
rendering  of  this  incident  is  well  known  to  all  lovers  of  art. 
The  legend  relates  that  she  and  her  fellows  devoted  their 
spare  time  to  needlework,  and  the  Virgin  is  very  rarely 
depicted  thus  occupied.  A  drawing  of  this  subject  was 
sold  at  Obach's  a  few  years  ago.    Tintoretto  shows  her 


SCHOOL  OF  TINTORETTO 
15  X  111  in. 


Facing  p.  ii8 


YSENBRANDT 


119 


engaged  in  making  Venetian  lace.  The  white  cushion  on 
which  it  is  being  worked  is  on  her  knees,  and,  at  the 
moment,  she  is  about  to  thread  her  needle.  In  form  and 
colour  the  picture  is  delightful.  Unfortunately  its  con- 
dition left  a  good  deal  to  be  desired,  for,  though  the  head 
is  perfectly  preserved,  the  hands  have  almost  been  rubbed 
away,  and  have  lost  much  of  their  proper  and  original  form. 
The  thread  which  passed  between  the  fingers  has  likewise 
vanished,  so  that  the  meaning  of  the  gesture  is  not  at  first 
obvious.  Notwithstanding  these  disadvantages,  the  picture 
retains  much  of  its  original  charm.  It  is  painted  on  a  small 
scale,  the  figure  being  about  half  life-size. 

One  other  picture,  of  which  a  reproduction  is  here  for 
the  first  time  published,  requires  a  brief  mention,  though 
no  adventure  attended  its  acquisition,  unless,  indeed,  a  visit 
to  the  shop  of  Messrs.  Carfax  and  Co.  may  be  so  described, 
for  it  was  there  I  bought  it,  on  the  prompting  of  my  old 
and  valued  friend,  Mr.  Robert  Ross.  It  belongs  to  that 
group  of  early  sixteenth-century  pictures  of  the  School  of 
Bruges,  which  are  united  together  under  the  name  of 
Adrian  Ysenbrandt.  In  former  days  they  used  all  to  be 
attributed  to  Mostaert,  but  now  we  have  learned  that  he 
painted  in  quite  a  different  style.  The  subject  is  St. 
Jerome  in  Penetence,  with  an  extraordmarily  festive- 
looking  tame  lion  keeping  him  company.  Such  St.  Jerome 
pictures  of  the  School  of  Bruges,  where  the  landscape 
forms  the  real  subject  and  St.  Jerome  is  merely  brought  in 
as  an  excuse,  present  a  marked  resemblance  to  pictures 
of  the  same  saint,  under  like  circumstances,  turned  out  by 
the  followers  of  Bellini.  St.  Jerome,  the  scholar,  was  a 
favourite  saint  at  the  time  of  the  Renaissance  of  learning. 
Diirer,  Carpaccio,  and  many  others  depicted  him  in  his 


120  A  FIND  OF  GIORGIONES 


comfortable  study  hard  at  work.  The  opportunity  of 
introducing  a  wide  landscape  background  made  his 
Penitence  almost  as  useful  an  incident  for  the  new  class 
of  landscape  painters  as  were,  for  instance,  "  St.  Christofer 
Fording  the  River,"  or  "  St.  John  Baptising,"  or  the  "  Flight 
into  Egypt."  Those  who  delight  in  the  landscape  back- 
grounds of  that  generation  of  artists  will  recognise  the 
charm  of  this  carefully  executed  and  well-preserved 
example. 


YSENBRANDT 
16i  X  12  in. 


Facing  p.  120 


CHAPTER  X. 


FURNITURE 

EVERYBODY  nowadays  collects  eighteenth-century 
English  furniture  and  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
oak.  It  is  not  so  very  long  ago  since  no  one  wanted 
either.  When  I  was  an  undergraduate  at  Cambridge  a  few 
superior  members  of  the  University  used  to  manifest  their 
"  culture  "  by  equipping  their  rooms  with  old  chairs,  Crom- 
well tables,  oak  coffin-stools,  an  oak  bureau,  an  Arundel 
reproduction  of  Perugino's  "  Crucifixion  "  over  the  mantel- 
piece, and  a  few  other  Arundels  and  photographs  of  Old 
Masters  on  the  walls.  They  bought  the  furniture  for  the 
most  part  at  Jolly's,  and  we  already  began  to  say  that  it  was 
no  longer  possible  to  pick  up  good  pieces  at  the  prices  that 
had  obtained  a  few  years  before.  I  remember  the  "  young  " 
Jolly  of  those  days  teUing  me  how,  when  he  was  a  boy,  his 
father's  great  warehouse  was  full  of  Chippendale  and  the 
like  furniture,  especially  chairs,  which  no  one  wanted  to  buy. 
They  were  such  a  drug  in  the  market  that  he  and  his 
brothers  actually  destroyed  some  without  suffering  severe 
retribution.  The  fun  was,  he  said,  to  throw  a  sturdy  maho- 
gany chair  into  the  air  in  such  a  way  that  when  it  alighted 
it  should  come  down  on  one  foot,  and  start  the  joints  of  all 
four  legs  at  once.  He  said  that  chairs  which  he  could 
remember  to  have  thus  destroyed  in  the  irresponsibility  of 
boyhood  he  now  knew  to  have  been  really  fine  Chippendale, 


122 


FURNITURE 


the  like  of  which  he  could  only  obtain  to-day  at  very  high 
prices. 

Those  days  were  already  past  before  my  time,  but  plenty 
of  good  things  were  still  to  be  had  at  prices  within  the  reach 
of  a  very  moderately  equipped  purse.  Of  course,  I  refer 
only  to  genuine  things.  Such  forgeries  as  were  then  be- 
ginning to  be  made  were  too  coarse  to  deceive  any  but  the 
ignorant.  Genuine  oak  court-cupboards  were  to  be  had  any 
day  for  about  four  pounds  apiece.  A  Cromwell  table  cost 
perhaps  thirty  shillings,  if  it  was  a  good  one  with  spiral  legs. 
Solid-backed  oak  chairs  were  to  be  had  in  numbers.  It  was 
about  this  time  that  I  furnished  our  first  house,  and  we 
bought  almost  everything  at  Jolly's.  We  were  horribly  and 
foolishly  economical,  and  went  without  all  sorts  of  delightful 
things  which  we  would  now  gladly  suffer  much  privation 
to  obtain.  Almost  every  old  English  town  then  had  some 
such  dealer  as  Jolly,  with  one  or  two  barns  or  warehouses 
filled  with  what  would  to-day  be  considered  most  desirable 
pieces.  The  greatest  dealers  of  the  present  time  can  no 
doubt  show  a  selection  of  much  finer  things,  but  the  local 
dealers  have  only  here  and  there  one  or  two  pieces,  on  hand 
at  any  moment,  at  all  comparable  with  the  general  run  of 
what  was  offered  then  on  all  sides,  and  but  slowly  unloaded. 
Carved  four-post  oak  bedsteads,  great  bulbous-legged  oak 
tables,  fine  Elizabethan  court-cupboards,  were  never  exactly 
common,  but  anyone  who  had  a  taste  for  such  things  could 
find  them  without  a  prolonged  search,  and  could  purchase 
them  at  a  cheaper  rate  than  that  obtaining  for  good  con- 
temporary furniture. 

As  during  the  'seventies  and  'eighties  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  love  of  old  things  grew  at  equal  pace  with  the 
knowledge  that  came  from  an  accurate  study  of  them,  this 


BYGONE  OPPORTUNITIES  123 


condition  of  the  market  passed  away.  What  had  at  first 
been  a  taste  of  the  refined  became  a  fashion  among  the 
wealthy,  as  I  have  said  ;  when  fashion  sets  in  any  direction 
the  day  of  the  small  collector  is  over.  Before  that  hap- 
pened one  could,  for  instance,  purchase,  as  I  in  fact  did,  at 
a  single  visit  to  one  shop,  the  following  lot  of  things  for  a 
total  sum  of  about  forty  pounds :  two  Cromwell  tables  (one 
very  large),  an  oak  court-cupboard,  six  Hepplewhite  maho- 
gany chairs  and  two  armchairs,  six  other  late  eighteenth- 
century  chairs,  a  stuffed  mahogany  armchair,  a  carved  oak 
napkin-press,  a  three-storeyed  dumb-waiter,  a  mahogany 
wardrobe,  a  brass-bound  mahogany  wine-cooler,  a  carved  oak 
Bible-box,  an  oak  coffin-stool,  a  Jacobean  oak  chest,  an  oak 
bureau,  and  two  little  tables,  besides  other  things  I  have 
forgotten.  All  these  pieces,  after  thirty  years'  service  in  my 
possession,  are  still  in  as  sound  condition  as  the  day  I  bought 
them.  They  are  plain,  honest  examples  of  the  work  of  their 
day ;  none  of  them  at  all  rare,  but  all  quite  genuine.  The 
dealers*  shops  all  over  England  abounded  with  that  kind  of 
old  furniture.    It  was  a  pleasant  time  for  a  young  collector. 

Abroad,  the  search  for  furniture  other  than  the  fine  work 
of  the  French  eighteenth  century  began  later  than  in  Eng- 
land. Switzerland  was  a  particularly  good  hunting  ground. 
The  only  trouble  was  that,  buyers  being  few,  the  local 
dealers  made  little  attempt  to  "  stock  old  things  at  all.  I 
remember,  for  example,  going  into  a  second-hand  furniture 
shop  at  Lausanne,  and  being  taken  by  the  dealer  away  off 
to  a  kind  of  cow-shed  beside  a  field.  Not  only  was  the  cow- 
shed full  of  good  things  in  a  bad  state  of  repair,  but  quan- 
tities of  old  materials  lay  about  in  the  field.  I  took  away 
thence  the  fronts  of  a  splendidly  carved  walnut  chest  and  of 
a  fine  cupboard,  both  substantially  sound,  but  the  backs  had 


124 


FURNITURE 


been  rudely  knocked  away,  as  not  worth  transportation. 
Quantities  of  panelling  also  lay  about,  the  lining  of  rooms 
from  houses  that  had  been  pulled  down  or  modernised,  and 
this  panelling  was  not  offered  for  sale  for  its  own  sake,  but 
only  as  material  to  be  worked  up  in  new  combinations. 
Even  the  packing-boxes  were  often  knocked  together  out 
of  such  remains ! 

The  remote  villages  of  Switzerland  at  that  time  often 
retained  excellent  pieces  of  old  furniture,  employed  for  com- 
munal purposes  or  in  the  chalets  of  wealthy  villagers.  These 
were  only  too  easily  purchasable,  and  much  work  of  admir- 
able quality  and  great  local  interest  drifted  away  into 
foreign  possession  before  the  communes  realised  what  they 
were  parting  with  so  lightly.  Thus,  I  remember  to  have 
been  offered  at  Stalden  in  the  Visp  valley  one  of  the  finest 
carved  chests  I  ever  saw.  It  was  in  the  priest's  house,  and 
was  used  for  holding  the  supply  of  candles  for  church  pur- 
poses. Doubtless  it  had  so  served  for  many  generations, 
and  the  wax  had  thoroughly  toned  the  surface  of  the  wood 
within  and  without  to  an  excellent  richness.  The  front  of 
this  great  chest  was  divided  into  three  panels,  and  in  each 
was  carved  in  high  rehef  a  noble  design  of  Hhes.  I  was  in- 
formed that  it  could  only  be  sold  by  resolution  of  the  village 
meeting  held  in  the  winter,  but  that  if  I  liked  to  offer  a  very 
moderate  sum  for  it,  I  should  no  doubt  be  permitted  to 
acquire  it.  The  matter  slipped  from  my  memory,  and  the 
chest  went  elsewhere;  at  all  events,  it  is  no  longer  at 
Stalden. 

Of  all  existing  types  of  old  furniture,  chests  are  the  most 
numerous,  and  cover  the  longest  period  of  time.  The  pre- 
dynastic  Egyptians  buried  their  dead  doubled  up  in  chests 
or  baskets,  and  numbers  of  these  receptacles  still  exist, 


CHURCH  CHESTS 


though  they  would  not  be  desirable  for  use  as  modern  house 
furniture.  There  are  ancient  Greek  chests,  such  as  that 
wonderful  box  inlaid  with  gold  found  in  a  tomb  at  Kertch. 
There  are  Coptic  chests  of  various  dates,  standing  on  legs, 
and  with  their  panels  agreeably  carved.  It  is  not,  however, 
till  the  thirteenth  century  that  we  find  any  English  chests,' 
save  some  few  rudely  hollowed  tree-trunks  bound  with  iron 
which  may  be  earlier,  though  no  one  can  date  them.  The 
real  starting-point  for  England  was  the  issuance  by  In- 
nocent III.  of  an  order  that  every  church  should  provide  a 
box  in  which  to  contain  the  offerings  of  the  faithful,  to 
defray  the  cost  of  the  Crusade.  The  very  considerable 
number  of  thirteenth-century  chests  that  still  remain  in 
EngHsh  country  churches  were  probably  made  in  response 
to  this  command. 

I  once  had  the  chance  of  obtaining  one  of  these  church 
chests,  but  some  remnants  of  good  feeling — a  horrible  im- 
pediment to  a  collector — prevented  me  from  availing  myself 
of  it.  There  is  a  church  in  one  of  our  southern  counties 
which,  only  a  dozen  years  or  so  ago,  remained  in  a  truly 
seventeenth-century  condition  of  neglect.  The  patron  was 
himself  the  rector,  and  he  was  at  loggerheads  with  the  squire 
and  all  his  flock.  Grass  and  weeds  grew  waist-high  in  the 
churchyard.  There  was  no  path  to  the  church  door,  except 
a  trodden  track  used  almost  solely  by  the  parson,  for  no 
one  attended  his  services.  Within,  all  was  decay.  The 
windows  were  broken,  and  birds  flew  in  and  out.  The 
rotten  rafters  were  foul  with  old  nests.  The  seats  or  pews 
were  all  falling  to  pieces,  so  that  hardly  a  bench  remained 
that  had  not  lost  its  legs  from  one  end  or  the  other.  The 
pavement  was  broken  to  pieces,  and  the  floor  was  all  over 
deep  holes.    There  was  a  decrepit  stove  in  the  middle  of 


126 


FURNITURE 


the  nave,  and  an  iron  pipe-chimney  meandered  in  a  crooked 
curve  up  towards  the  roof  before  bending  off  with  final 
direct  determination  and  making  its  way  out  below  the 
eaves.  The  pulpit  was  broken  and  unstable,  but  I  suppose 
it  can  have  been  seldom  used.  Some  fine  monuments  were 
decaying,  their  heads  and  hands  broken,  and  the  pieces 
lying  about.  But  what  excited  my  cupidity  was  a  genuine 
thirteenth-century  chest  and  two  Gothic  helmets,  which  had 
belonged  to  the  monuments  of  late  fifteenth-century 
knights.  The  wicked  old  parson  would  have  let  me  have 
them,  and  goodness  only  knows  how  I  came  to  escape  from 
that  temptation.  In  due  course  of  nature  even  he  ultimately 
died,  and  his  successor  was  a  man  of  different  type. 
Now  the  chest  is  carefully  preserved.  The  helmets  are 
replaced  on  the  iron  pegs  to  which  they  belonged.  There 
is  a  new  roof,  new  seats,  new  pavement,  and  all  things 
decent  and  in  order. 

The  earliest  existing  English  chests,  made  for  domestic 
rather  than  church  use,  are  a  group  from  the  county  of 
Kent,  all  apparently  the  work  of  a  single  maker.  They 
are  "  pin-hinged,"  and  consequently  liave  sloping  ends ;  the 
fronts  are  carved  with  a  simple  but  effective  arcading 
grouped  under  triangular  pediments.  Word  reached  me 
that  a  chest,  which  I  gathered  was  of  this  kind,  had  been 
sold  to  a  local  dealer  out  of  a  cottage  at  East  Peckham.  I 
sent  a  trusty  foreman  builder  to  bargain  for  it.  He  had  the 
good  sense  to  take  a  cart  with  him,  and  promptly  carried  it 
off.  I  happened  to  pass  this  cart  on  the  high-road  as  I  was 
motoring  in  haste  to  catch  a  train.  I  just  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  chest,  with  its  feet  in  the  air,  and  of  its  carved  arcad- 
ing, as  we  hurried  by.  That  momentary  view  sufficed,  and  I 
knew  that  one  of  my  ambitions  was  fulfilled.  Later 


IRON-BOUND  CHESTS 


127 


examination  showed  it  to  be  in  very  good  condition,  except 
that  it  had  lost  its  original  lock,  and  that  the  lid  had  been 
renewed.  Curiously  enough,  a  few  weeks  later,  my  neigh- 
bour, Mr.  Mercer,  acquired  another,  almost  identical  in 
design  with  mine ;  but  whereas  mine  is  faulty  above  and 
perfect  below,  his  is  imperfect  below,  but  has  the 
original  lid  and  lock  in  excellent  condition.  These  chests, 
and  two  or  three  more  like  them,  date  from  the  first  half  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  before  the  Black  Death. 

Fifteenth-century  chests  in  England  are  very  rare,  until 
we  come  down  to  the  introduction  of  linen-fold,  and 
most  of  the  linen-fold  chests  we  see  in  museums  and  country 
houses  date  from  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Abroad,  however,  it  is  still  possible  to  find  large,  iron-bound 
chests  of  late  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  century  work.  I 
bought  one  at  Basle,  and  two  others  at  Paderborn.  The 
latter  came  to  us  in  the  peculiarly  determined  fashion  which 
sometimes  happens.  We  applied  to  see  the  Cathedral 
treasury,  but  a  meeting  of  bishops  was  going  on  in  the 
sacristy,  and  we  had  to  wait  an  hour  till  that  was  over.  So 
we  said  we  would  fill  up  the  time  at  an  old  furniture  shop 
we  had  been  told  of.  We  were  stroUing  across  to  it  when 
I  said,  "  This  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  the  kind  of  place 
where  we  shall  get  anything."  "  I  feel,  on  the  contrary," 
said  my  companion,  the  prophetess,  "that  there  is 
something  waiting  for  us  there,  and  I  believe  it  is 
a  Gothic  chest."  Sure  enough,  there  it  was,  right 
in  front  of  us  as  we  entered  the  inner  room  of 
the  shop.  It  was  an  iron-bound  chest  with  the  clamps 
ending  in  fleurs-de-lys.  The  Basle  chest  is  similar,  so  that 
the  type  was  probably  common  all  over  Germany  in  the 
later  Middle  Ages.    The  South  German  example,  though 


128 


FURNITURE 


of  equal  date  with  the  Westphahan,  is,  as  might  be  expected, 
superior  to  it  in  design,  proportion,  and  workmanship. 

Such  foreign  furniture  as  has  been  intended  for  me  by 
the  Fates  has  usually  been  bought  in  matter-of-fact  ways, 
but  a  purchase  made  at  Genoa  was  rather  an  exception.  I 
had  been  visiting  the  Brignole  Sale  palace  with  a  friend, 
and  the  talk  had  fallen  on  the  dating  of  furniture.  "  How 
do  you  know  that  a  particular  chair  is  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  for  instance  ? "  was  a  question  put  to  me.  We 
were  standing  at  the  moment  before  one  of  the  famous  full- 
length  Van  Dyck's,  in  which  there  is  a  chair.  So  I  replied, 
"  If  you  were  to  find  a  chair  just  like  the  chair  in  that  pic- 
ture, you  would  be  able  to  date  it  confidently  to  about  the 
time  of  Van  Dyck*s  visit  to  Italy,  say,  1625."  Half  an  hour 
later  we  went  into  a  very  poor  antiquity  shop  down  near  the 
quays,  and  there  was  what  might  have  been  the  very  chair 
in  the  picture,  the  woodwork  in  good  condition,  though  the 
upholstery  was  in  rags. 

Another  time,  in  London,  I  was  attracted  by  a  chair  of 
unusual  form,  adorned  with  embossed  leather  and  carving. 
Being  in  doubt  as  to  its  country  of  origin  and  date,  I  did 
not  purchase  it.  The  next  day,  at  the  house  of  a  descendant 
of  Admiral  Byng,  I  noticed  in  the  middle  of  the  hall  an 
exactly  similar  chair.  "  Please,  what  is  that  chair  ?  "  I  asked. 
"  Why,  don't  you  know  ?  That's  the  chair  in  which  Admiral 
Byng  sat  to  be  shot."  I  returned  to  the  shop  in  London, 
and  carried  away  its  fellow. 

No  part  of  Europe  produced  so  much  solid  and  on  the 
whole  good  furniture  in  the  seventeenth  century  as  the  Low 
Countries.  One  has  only  to  look  at  the  pictures  of  Dutch 
middle-class  interiors  to  be  assured  how  well-equipped  they 
were  with  desirable  chairs,  tables,  cabinets,  cupboards,  and 


DUTCH  CABINETS 


129 


bedsteads.  These  survived  in  great  numbers  down  to  the 
nineteenth  century,  when  they  went  altogether  out  of 
fashion,  and  suffered  much  destruction.  A  friend  of  mine, 
who  possessed  both  sense  and  opportunity,  made  a  great 
collection  of  the  handsome  tall  cabinets  which  are  now 
again  so  much  sought  after.  He  used  to  buy  as  many  as  he 
wanted  for  about  five  pounds  apiece.  He  used  them  for 
panelling  a  long  gallery  in  his  Hertfordshire  home.  Per- 
haps he  may  now  regret  having  dealt  so  cavalierly  with 
cabinets  of  an  elaborately  decorative  character  which  cer- 
tainly have  lost  in  value  by  being  dismembered.  His  room, 
however,  into  which  these  materials  were  fitted  by  an  able 
architect,  is  a  very  beautiful  place,  and  the  result,  in  this 
case,  can  be  held  to  justify  a  method  of  dealing  with  old 
treasures  which  would  not  be  generally  commendable. 

The  Dutch  oak  cabinets  which  are  amongst  our  own 
possessions  are  good  examples  of  the  type,  and  one  of  them 
is  of  quite  unusual  dimensions.  They  are  inlaid  with  a 
black  substance  which  is  probably  precious  wood,  though 
I  have  sometimes  had  a  suspicion  that  in  one  case  it  may 
be  whalebone.  I  have  examined  all  the  Dutch  cabinets 
I  have  been  able  to  see  closely  during  several  years,  in 
search  for  inlaid  whalebone,  and  never  yet  confidently 
identified  it.  In  the  great  days  of  whaling,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  supply  of  whalebone  was 
so  large,  and  the  uses  for  it  so  few,  that  the  price  had  sunk 
to  twopence  per  pound.  An  English  ivory-turner  at 
Amsterdam,  John  Osborne  by  name,  invented  in  the  year 
1 61 8  a  method  of  uniting  together  thin  pieces  of  whalebone 
into  a  black  mass,  which  became  so  supple  and  soft  that 
it  could  be  pressed  into  any  shape  in  a  metal  mould,  or  it 
would  take  the  impression  of  even  the  finest  lines  engraved 
I 


I30 


FURNITURE 


on  a  plate  of  metal.  The  substance  was  as  black  as  jet, 
and  is  recorded  to  have  been  used  to  ornament  mirror- 
frames,  sideboards,  mantelpieces,  knife-handles,  and  so 
forth.  For  this  invention,  which  doubled  the  price  of 
whalebone,  Osborne  received  a  pension  for  ten  years  from 
the  States  General.  This  fact  is  proof  how  general  must 
have  been  the  use  of  the  material,  and  yet,  with  one  known 
exception,  whalebone  has  not  been  identified  on  any  piece 
of  Dutch  manufacture.  The  conclusion  would  seem  to  be 
that  it  is  generally  hidden  under  the  designation  ebony  or 
horn. 

The  exception  to  which  I  have  alluded  is  certain  oval 
medallion  portraits  of  Frederick  Henry,  Prince  of  Orange, 
and  Amalia  his  wife,  which  were  impressed  in  whalebone 
by  John  Osborne  himself  in  1626,  his  name  and  theirs  being 
impressed  on  the  back  of  them.  There  are  examples  of 
these  in  the  British  Museum  and  other  collections,  and  I  own 
a  pair  which  were  given  to  me  by  the  late  Mr.  Henry  Willett. 
I  have  often  seen  them  in  catalogues  described  as  made  of 
horn,  from  which,  indeed,  they  are  only  to  be  distinguished 
by  the  perfect  blackness  and  brilliancy  of  their  surface. 
Whether  Osborne's  discovery  of  this  method  of  treating 
whalebone  led  to  the  similar  treatment  of  horn,  so  commonly 
employed  in  Holland  m  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  I  am  not  able  to  assert 

It  is  not  a  far  cry  from  old  furniture  to  sculptured  wooderi 
figures.  I  have  already  related  how  we  bought  one  such 
group  at  Caddenabbia  after  the  adventure  of  the  Victor 
Emmanuel.  Two  or  three  others  were  picked  up  in  Eng- 
land— the  most  notable,  and  one  of  the  finest  wooden  figures 
existing,  having  been  found  in  a  Brighton  shop  under  the 
tamest  possible  circumstances.    I  was  unfortunately  led 


SAINT  MARTIN 


to  part  with  it  about  twenty  years  later,  to  my  unutterable 
regret,  and  it  is  now  in  the  New  York  Metropolitan 
Museum.  The  story  with  it  was  that  it  came  out  of  a  Surrey 
chapel,  and  had  been  the  property  of  a  Lady  Ashburton. 
My  own  impression  was  and  is  that  probably  it  was  made  in 
the  fourteenth  century  in  the  He  de  France,  rather  than  in 
England.    The  figure  represents  St.  John  the  Evangelist. 

The  saint,  however,  whom  I  was  always  looking  out  for 
was  my  own  patron,  St.  Martin.  Not  that  I  felt  called  upon 
to  burn  incense  before  him,  but  that  I  needed  him  to  fill 
a  niche  contrived  in  the  restored  part  of  Allington  Castle,  as 
a  kind  of  signature ;  also  I  desired  to  carve  over  his  head 
this  motto  from  the  Persian  poet,  Labid  ibn  Rabiah  : 

"  The  mountains  remain  after  us 
And  the  strong  Towers  when  we  are  gone." 

Ultimately  it  was  my  daughter  who  found  St.  Martin  for 
me  at  a  Brussels  dealer's.  It  is  rather  a  late  and  chubby 
figure,  but  it  retains  its  old  colouring  on  man  and  harness, 
and  the  gilt  breastplate  shines  afar.  The  trouble  was  that 
the  niche  was  too  large  for  the  figure,  which,  besides,  was 
of  rather  tender  wood,  unsuited  to  last  long  in  the  open 
air.  So  we  decided  to  have  a  copy  made  of  it  in  the  same 
Doulting  stone  which  is  used  in  our  works  of  repair,  and 
we  found  that  there  was  in  the  neighbouring  town, 
Maidstone,  a  stone-carver  willing,  and  said  to  be  able  to 
carry  out  the  work.  In  due  season  the  stone  St.  Martin 
was  finished,  and  displayed  for  a  day  or  two,  to  the  public 
wonder,  in  a  shop  window  in  the  town.  He  had  a  triumphal 
journey  out  on  a  cart,  and  astonished  everyone  that  met 
him,  his  brilliant  colouring  and  well-fed,  cheerful  aspect 
producing  an  irresistible  good  temper  in  all  beholders. 


132 


FURNITURE 


Fortunately,  his  niche  faces  north,  or  I  think  we  could 
scarcely  have  supported  his  new  radiance  without  pumping 
mud  upon  him.  Time,  however,  has  toned  him  down,  and 
rendered  him  a  less  obtrusive  and  soberer  personage.  After 
he  had  stood  a  year  or  two  in  his  niche,  word  was  brought 
to  me  that  the  stone-carver  wanted  to  be  allowed  to  come 
and  see  the  Castle  courtyard.  Permission  was  given,  and 
he  came.  I  am  told  that  he  stood  for  an  hour  gazing  enrap- 
tured at  the  work  of  his  hands.  It  appears  that  he  was  about 
to  emigrate,  and  wished  to  enjoy  a  last  long  look  at  his 
masterpiece. 

In  the  same  Brussels  dealer's,  and  at  the  same  time  as  St. 
Martin,  was  found  an  admirable  fifteenth-century  stone 
figure  of  St.  Columba — not  the  Celtic  saint,  but  the  Belgian 
saintess  of  that  name.  This  little  lady  in  her  voluminous 
drapery  might  have  walked  out  of  one  of  Van  Eyck's 
pictures.  There  was  a  niche  in  a  thirteenth-century  wall 
awaiting  her,  and  she  took  her  place  in  it  at  once,  and  has 
seemed  happy  there  ever  since,  with  a  blue  mosaic  made  of 
the  old  Cairo  pot  fragments  for  background.  There  is  a 
reredos  with  ten  scenes  from  the  life  of  St.  Columba  in  the 
parish  church  of  Deerlyk,  near  Courtrai,  in  West  Flanders — 
so  my  old  friend,  Mr.  W.  H.  James  Weale,  informs  me.  I 
have  an  impression  that  our  saint  came  from  that 
neighbourhood. 


CHAPTER  XL 


HOW  WE   FOUND  A  CASTLE 


N  the  15th  of  May,  1905,  I  inserted  the  following 
advertisement  in  the  Times: — 


"  Wanted  to  purchase,  old  manor-house  or  abbey, 
built  in  the  sixteenth  century  or  earlier,  with  old  garden, 
not  much  land,  no  sporting  facilities,  preferably  five  miles 
or  more  from  a  railway  station." 

The  only  replies  that  I  received  were  two:  the  first 
offering  me  a  stuccoed  "  castellated  mansion,  suitable  for 
a  hotel  or  hydro  " — a  real  beast  of  a  building ;  the  other 
describing  a  true  mediaeval  castle  in  such  fascinating  detail 
that  it  seemed  impossible  to  believe  that  a  building  so 
delightful  could  exist.  It  told  of  moat  and  towers,  of  two 
courtyards,  of  high  embattled  walls,  of  dovecots,  tilting- 
yard,  and  I  know  not  what  other  high-sounding  reminis- 
cences from  the  days  of  chivalry.  What  made  this  still 
more  surprising  was  the  fact  that  this  wonderful  castle  was 
said  to  exist  not  ten  miles  distant  from  my  own  birthplace, 
and  yet  I  had  never  heard  tell  of  it,  unless  my  rather  clear 
memories  of  more  than  half  of  the  first  seven  years  of  my 
life  were  at  fault.  So  incredulous  was  I  as  to  the  existence 
of  a  castle  at  Allington,  near  Maidstone,  in  any  such 
completeness  of  preservation  as  the  reply  to  my  advertise- 
ment asseverated  that  I  hardly  thought  a  journey  down  into 
Kent  worth  while.    As,  however,  we  were  starting  a  few 


134         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 

days  later  to  motor  to  Brighton,  we  thought  we  might  as 
well  go  round  by  way  of  Maidstone  and  see  upon  what 
basis  of  truth  this  attractive  superstructure  was  reared. 

The  drive  that  we  took  that  beautiful  20th  of  May 
proved  to  be  a  turning-point  in  our  lives,  little  as  we 
expected  any  such  result  when  we  set  off.  There  was  only 
a  dim  feeling  within  us  that  to  "collect"  an  old  building 
might  be  delightful,  and  that,  at  all  events,  to  hunt  for  one 
was  a  form  of  the  collecting  sport  that  we  had  not 
experienced.  Save  for  the  introduction  of  motoring,  even 
that  hunt  would  never  have  occurred  to  us.  The  joy  of 
the  road,  however,  had  taken  possession  of  us  with  the 
acquisition  of  our  first  car — a  7  h.-p.  Panhard — in  1903, 
and  we  had  spent  every  possible  fine  day  of  leisure  in  the 
two  years  that  had  followed  in  scouring  the  roads  and  lanes 
of  England  and  France,  seeking  out  remote  abbeys,  castles, 
old  houses,  and  monuments  of  all  kinds,  and  finding  a 
continuously  increasing  joy  in  that  research.  Thus,  as  we 
made  our  way  out  of  London  through  Bromley  that 
brilliant  morning,  we  were  not  thinking  so  much  of  an  old 
building  to  be  acquired  as  of  one  to  be  seen. 

A  little  more  than  a  mile  short  of  Maidstone  a  finger- 
post indicated  "  Allington  "  as  to  be  sought  down  a  rather 
narrow  side-road  much  encumbered  with  farming  impedi- 
ments. It  led  us  downhill,  past  various  quarries  of  Kentish 
rag  sunk  deeply  into  the  ground,  with  always  the  wide 
stretch  of  the  North  Downs  broad  open  before  us  and  the 
Medway  Valley  in  front  at  their  feet.  We  passed  the  little 
village  church,  beneath  some  great  elms,  and  we  must  have 
had  the  possibility  of  buying  the  place  in  our  minds,  or  one 
of  us  would  not  have  said,  "  Perhaps  there's  where  we  shall 
lay  our  bones."    A  little  twist  to  right  and  left,  over  a 


ALLINGTON 


135 


hideous  quarry  tram-line,  a  further  run  down  a  steepish 
lane,  past  some  cottages  and  a  barn,  with  a  dreadfully 
disfigured  acre  or  two  of  ground  covered  with  a  tar- 
paving  manufactory  right  ahead,  and  then,  when  we  were 
finally  concluding  that  there  was  no  castle  and  that  we  had 
been  deceived,  we  turned  the  corner  of  another  barn,  and 
there  it  was.  Neither  of  us  will  ever  forget  that  moment ; 
we  fell  victims  to  the  beauty  of  the  ruin  at  once,  and  have 
remained  enthralled  ever  since. 

It  was  not  so  much  the  outside  that  captivated  us,  for 
that  was  wholly  enveloped  in  the  densest  coat  of  ivy  I  have 
ever  seen  on  a  building.  An  examination  of  old  prints 
and  photographs  shows  that  down  to  the  first  decade  of  the 
nineteenth  century  ivy  was  still  absent.  It  was  beginning 
to  grow  up  the  walls  about  1820.  It  was  still  only  a  patch- 
work covering  in  or  about  i860.  In  1905  it  had  surged 
over  the  whole  exterior  and  had  obliterated  every 
architectural  feature.  Only  the  archway  of  the  gate- 
house was  free.  As  old  orchards  and  other  trees  stood  in 
front  of  the  ruins,  they  were  practically  invisible,  except 
from  near  at  hand.  Moreover,  only  a  small  portion  of  the 
moat  still  contained  a  little  water.  The  rest  had  been  so 
filled  up  and  grassed  over,  that  the  gate-house  bridge  was 
buried,  and  only  appeared  like  two  walls  limiting  the  road- 
way on  either  hand. 

When,  however,  we  passed  under  the  long  dark  entrance 
arch  and  found  ourselves  in  the  first  courtyard,  with  its 
green  lawn,  climbing  roses  and  creepers,  its  charming  Tudor 
hall-porch,  and  all  the  other  features  we  were  destined  to 
know  so  well,  the  peaceful  harmony  of  the  place,  its 
delicate  beauty,  its  sense  of  aloofness  from  the  modern 
world,  its  atmosphere  of  antiquity,  overwhelmed  us  with 


136         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 


such  a  .flood  of  delight  that  words  will  not  avail  to  express 
the  half  of  it. 

A  moment  later  we  were  received  by  Mr.  Dudley  Falcke, 
the  good  man  who  had  stepped  in  at  a  critical  moment  and 
saved  the  place  from  destruction.  Ten  years  before  he 
had  come  down  from  London  and  found  it  about  to  be 
abandoned,  the  last  inhabited  fragment  in  one  corner  of  it 
being  considered  no  longer  fit  even  to  house  the  two 
labourers'  famiHes  that  had  succeeded  the  farmers  who  used 
to  dwell  in  it.  Then  the  courtyard  was  full  of  pigs,  hens, 
and  mess.  Everything  was  decayed,  the  roof  rotten,  the 
floors  full  of  holes — neglect  rampant.  He  saw  in  a  moment 
the  possibilities  of  the  place,  and,  having  obtained  a  lease 
of  it,  he  set  to  work  and  turned  it  into  the  loveliest  little 
house  in  Kent.  He  attempted  no  restoration,  but  contented 
himself  with  repairing  what  had  been  the  farm-house — the 
kitchen-house  of  Tudor  days — and  living  in  it.  It  was  to 
the  surroundings  that  he  devoted  his  attention.  Being  an 
expert  and  energetic  gardener,  and  especially  rose-grower, 
he  made  the  wilderness  blossom,  and  the  result,  as  we  saw 
it,  was  of  surpassing  beauty. 

That  meeting  with  him  was  the  foundation  of  a  friend- 
ship, only  just  lately  rounded  by  his  death.  It  is  impossible 
for  me  to  write  even  briefly  about  Allington  Castle  without 
coupling  with  it  the  name  of  the  man  who  actually  saved 
it  from  destruction  at  a  most  critical  moment.  Under  his 
guidance,  then  and  several  times  afterwards  in  the 
following  weeks,  we  made  close  acquaintance  with  the 
ruins,  which  he  had  studied  as  fully  as  was  possible  so  long 
as  they  were  smothered  in  ivy.  Unfortunately  he  loved 
the  ivy  for  its  own  sake,  and  did  not  realise  the  destruction 
it  was  bringing  to  pass.    And,  of  course,  it  was  picturesque. 


DESTRUCTIVE  IVY 


137 


Poets  of  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years  have  sung  ivy  into 
fame.  The  "  ivy-mantled  tower  "  is  a  thing  of  dreams  and 
romance.  Poets  might,  perhaps,  effect  a  like  miracle  with 
snakes.  In  fact,  the  ivy  is  the  boa-constrictor  of  plants. 
It  was  hugging  the  oaks  to  death  in  the  neighbouring  wood, 
it  was  pulling  down  the  walls  and  towers  of  the  castle,  and 
it  was  digging  out  great  caverns  at  their  foundations. 

Not  many  miles  away  there  existed  a  few  years  ago  the 
noble  ruins  of  a  castle  at  Leybourne.  Ivy  invaded  them, 
and  in  no  long  time  pulled  down  the  whole  of  one  of  the 
principal  walls  and  of  a  tower.  The  owner  will  not  allow 
it  to  be  cut  off,  and  the  rest,  including  a  magnificent 
fourteenth-century  gate-house,  is  bound  to  fall.  There  is 
no  greater  curse  to  ancient  buildings  than  ivy.  The 
popular  impression  is  that  ivy  is  of  great  antiquity.  I  have 
often  been  shown  ivy-stems  of  great  thickness  and  informed 
that  they  are  hundreds  of  years  old.  It  is  an  error.  Ivy 
grows  very  fast.  I  have  been  able  to  prove  that  a  stem 
nine  inches  thick  was  much  less  than  a  century  old — 
scarcely  more  than  half  a  century.  An  examination  of  a 
great  number  of  engravings  of  the  old  buildings  of  Kent 
proves  that  there  was  little  ivy  on  any  of  them  about  the 
year  1800.  The  plague  of  ivy  became  rampant  in  Kent 
about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  If  ivy  had 
been  the  normal  clothing  of  old  buildings  three  hundred 
years  ago,  hardly  one  of  them  would  have  been  standing 
to-day. 

When  we  drove  away  toward  Brighton  after  that  first 
short  visit  there  was  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of  either  of  us 
but  that  we  must  buy  Alhngton.  The  matter  was  not  even 
discussed  on  that  basis.  We  would  buy  the  lease  from 
Mr.  Falcke,  and  the  freehold  also.     But  about  the  time 


138         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 


we  were  approaching  Tunbridge  Wells  a  fundamental 
difference  of  outlook  became  gravely  apparent.  To  me  it 
was  self-evident  that  we  must  repair  the  disroofed  and 
disfloored  rooms  of  the  mediaeval  parts  that  were  still 
upstanding,  and  make  the  repaired  house  our  principal  or 
only  home.  The  companion  of  my  travels  and  my  life  saw 
chiefly  the  beauty  of  the  place  as  it  was.  She  would  repair 
the  existing  inhabited  part  and  use  it  as  a  week-end  cottage 
to  come  down  to  from  London.  We  agreed  to  let  the  future 
decide,  but  to  begin  by  getting  possession ;  and  so  it  was 
done. 

Not  then,  nor  for  many  months  and,  indeed,  years 
afterwards,  did  the  full  history  of  the  place  become  known 
to  us.  It  was  only  a  week  or  two  ago  that  we  established 
for  the  first  time  the  unsuspected  fact  that  a  small  portion 
of  the  building  is  actually  Roman.  The  first  thing  to  be 
done  was  to  tear  off  the  ivy — sl  work  of  many  weeks.  Tons 
of  it  were  consumed  in  persistent  bonfires.  It  was  a 
sacrifice  for  the  time.  The  walls  at  first  looked  gaunt,  and 
one  side  was  actually  ugly.  Then,  however,  we  were  able 
to  read  much  of  the  history  of  the  building,  and  we  became 
likewise  of  one  mind  as  to  the  necessity  of  repairing  the 
ruin,  which  was  seen  to  be  in  a  parlous  state  of  decay.  It 
had  either  to  be  let  fall  or  propped  up.  We  devoted  a 
year*s  careful  study  to  it  before  coming  to  a  decision.  We 
dug  away  accumulations  of  soil  many  feet  deep  which  had 
piled  themselves  against  the  foot  of  the  walls.  We 
excavated  the  foundations  of  walls  that  were  otherwise 
gone.  We  made  an  elaborate  large  scale  plan  of  the  whole, 
and  we  investigated  every  existing  detail  that  could 
throw  light  upon  what  had  once  existed.  It  was  a  work 
full  of  interest  and  sometimes  of  excitement  Revela- 


ALLINGTON  CASTLE:    OUTER  COURTYARD 


Facing  p.  138 


ITS  EARLY  HISTORY 


139 


tions  and  discoveries  followed  one  another  in  quick 
succession. 

In  this  way  we  mastered  the  history  of  the  building  from 
the  beginning,  and  this  is  the  outline  of  what  was  finally 
proved.  The  site  has  been  inhabited  from  the  end  of  the 
Stone  Age.  Doubtless  the  earliest  inhabitants  lived  in  pile- 
dwellings  erected  in  a  swamp  by  the  side  of  the  Medway. 
By  degrees  the  debris  of  what  they  brought  in,  used,  and 
consumed  accumulated  till  the  site  of  the  village  rose  into 
dry  land,  and  its  margin  became  a  ditch  or  moat.  Many 
stone  implements  have  been  found  within  the  precincts, 
but  no  excavation  has  been  made  down  to  the  level  of  pre- 
historic habitation.  Within  the  moat  there  was,  no  doubt, 
a  stockade.  When  the  Romans  came,  they  must  have 
found  a  British  moated  and  stockaded  village  on  the  site, 
the  inhabitants  being  in  the  late  Celtic  stage  of  civilisation 
(like  those  at  the  neighbouring  Aylesford).  A  few  of  their 
burials,  with  characteristic  pottery,  have  been  revealed 
close  by  in  recent  years  in  the  process  of  quarrying. 

The  Romans  erected  some  kind  of  a  stone  building 
within  the  village  enclosure  and  a  villa  outside  it.  It  is 
highly  probable  that  they  quarried  the  Kentish  rag,  of 
which  the  Roman  Wall  of  London  was  built,  out  of  the  hill 
close  to  the  villa.  Roman  interments  have  been  found  in 
the  immediate  neighbourhood*  After  the  Romans  the 
Normans  were  the  next  to  leave  lasting  traces  of  their 
coming  to  Allington.  They  set  up  a  mound,  surmounted 
no  doubt,  as  usual,  with  a  wooden  redoubt,  just  outside  the 
moat  to  the  south.  The  village  enclosure  became  the 
bailey  of  this  castle,  and  its  palisade  was  presently  replaced 
by  a  stone  wall,  portions  of  which  remaining  show  the 
characteristic  masonry  associated  in  these  parts  with  the 


I40         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 


name  of  Gundulf.  Still  within  what  may  be  called  Norman 
days,  a  stone  castle  was  built  inside  the  moat,  and  the 
mound  castle  without  was  then  probably  abandoned.  This 
stone  castle  was  destroyed  as  a  place  of  arms  by  order  of 
the  King  in  the  year  1174,  though  considerable  fragments 
of  it  were  left  standing,  and  some  can  still  be  identified. 
Thereupon  an  unfortified  manor-house  was  erected,  and 
some  rooms  of  this  still  exist  and  are  again  inhabited. 

This  manor-house  and  its  lands  were  purchased  by  Sir 
Stephen  de  Penchester  (otherwise  Penshurst)  and  his  wife, 
who,  in  1282,  obtained  a  licence  to  crenellate,  and  there- 
upon built  the  castle  that  now  stands,  including  within  it 
the  twelfth-century  manor-house  and  considerable  frag- 
ments of  the  walls  of  the  first  stone  castle.  From  them  it 
descended,  generation  after  generation,  several  times 
through  heiresses,  till,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.,  it  being 
then  very  much  out  of  repair,  it  was  purchased  by  Sir  Henry 
Wyatt,  and  by  him  very  thoroughly  restored.  He  added 
to  it  a  cross  building,  dividing  the  original  courtyard  into 
two,  and  including  one  of  the  earliest  long  galleries  in 
England,  perhaps  the  earliest ;  also  a  porch,  and  many 
new  windows,  fireplaces,  and  other  existing  details,  besides 
a  quantity  of  fine  panelling,  now,  alas !  no  longer  to  be  found. 

These  were  the  days  of  Allington's  greatest  glory,  when 
it  received  within  its  walls  kings  and  cardinals — Henry 
VII.,  Henry  VIIL,  Anne  Boleyn,  Katharine  Parr,  Cardinal 
Wolsey,  and  other  notable  personages.  Sir  Henry  was 
succeeded  by  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt,  his  son,  the  poet,  states- 
man, and  diplomatist.  Either  he  or  his  contemporary, 
Surrey,  was  the  inventor  of  English  blank  verse,  the  first, 
or  some  of  the  first,  lines  of  which  may  have  been  written 
in  his  AUington  study.     Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  the  younger 


DILAPIDATION 


141 


did  not  long  enjoy  his  inheritance,  for,  when  still  a  young 
man,  it  was  his  misfortune  to  become  the  leader  of  the 
Kentish  rebellion  (a  protest  against  Queen  Mary's  Spanish 
marriage),  whereby  he  presently  lost  his  head.  AUington 
then  escheated  to  the  Crown,  and  thereupon  fell  on  evil 
days.  Presently,  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  it  did,  indeed,  come 
into  the  possession  of  the  Astley  family,  but  they  never 
lived  in  it,  and  it  evidently  fell  into  neglect.  About  this 
time,  also,  the  great  hall,  the  great  chamber,  the  chapel, 
and  the  north-east  tower  were  burnt  down  and  not 
afterwards  repaired. 

Early  in  the  seventeenth  century  the  whole  place  was 
once  more  put  into  some  kind  of  order  for  letting,  and  it 
was  hired  by  members  of  the  Best  family,  who  were  Roman 
Catholics.  For  them  a  chamber  in  the  east  tower  was 
converted  into  a  chapel,  whilst  over  the  whole  of  the 
unburnt  part  of  the  building,  except  the  Long  Gallery,  a 
top  storey  of  timber  and  plaster  was  added.  That  was  the 
last  addition.  All  the  remaining  history  of  the  building  is 
one  of  decay.  In  the  nineteenth  century  the  place  was 
divided  into  two  farm-houses,  which  were  inhabited  by 
different  families  side  by  side  till  about  the  year  1840. 
The  condition  of  the  building  is  shown  in  certain  drawings 
by  Turner,  which  are  preserved  in  the  Tate  Gallery,  and 
in  many  engravings.  About  1840  the  top  storey  and  the 
floors  were  removed,  for  the  sake  of  the  oak,  from  all 
except  the  Tudor  kitchen  and  a  neighbouring  room.  The 
remainder  was  abandoned  to  ruin.  The  still  surviving 
farm-house  was  cut  up  into  two  cottages,  and  they  in  turn 
were  about  to  be  abandoned  when,  as  above  related, 
Mr.  Falcke  intervened,  and  the  long  tale  of  neglect  and 
destruction  came  to  an  end. 


142         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 

Thus  the  existing  building  and  surrounding  wall  contain 
specimens  of  work  of  the  Roman,  Norman,  early  Enghsh, 
Tudor,  and  Jacobean  periods,  and  nothing  later  except 
my  own  scrupulous  repairs.  The  site  has  been  continuously 
inhabited  from  pre-historic  times,  and  has,  perhaps,  the 
longest  record  of  occupancy  of  any  house  in  England.  Its 
documentary  history,  as  worked  out  by  my  daughter  from 
the  archives  preserved  in  the  Record  Office,  is  unbroken 
from  the  days  of  Edward  the  Confessor.  We  know  for 
certain  the  name  of  every  owner  from  that  time  to  the 
present  day.  That  we  should  have  been  able  to  find 
within  thirty-four  miles  of  London  a  building  unique, 
historically  and  architecturally,  and  one  in  which  the  great 
bulk  was  still  in  tolerably  complete  preservation — in 
preservation,  in  fact,  more  complete,  relatively  to  its  size, 
than  any  other  castle  known  to  me  in  England,  and  that 
we  should  have  been,  further,  able  to  acquire  it,  was  the 
greatest  stroke  of  good  fortune  that  ever  came  to  me  as  a 
collector  of  ancient  works  of  art.  The  castle  was,  in  fact, 
the  crown  of  our  collection,  and  long  before  the  year  of 
probation  had  passed  we  had  decided  to  undertake  the 
repair  of  it  and  make  it  a  worthy  casket  to  contain  the 
rest. 

At  this  time  of  writing  the  process  of  repair  is  completed 
as  far  as  some  three-fifths  of  the  building  is  concerned. 
The  Long  Gallery,  which  was  burnt  down  in  1818,  or  there- 
abouts, has  been  re-erected  above  its  surviving  ground-floor. 
The  west  wing  and  gate-house  have  been  refloored  and 
reroofed.  Solomon's  Tower,  as  the  ancient  donjon  tower 
was  named  of  old,  has  had  its  knocked-off  corner  replaced. 
The  missing  battlements  have  been  renewed,  in  the  gaps 
between  those  that  remained.   The  ancient  wall  of  enceinte 


REPARATION 


143 


on  the  site  of  the  old  palisade  has  had  its  missing  parts 
replaced  on  their  old  foundations. 

If  all  that  was  required  had  been  to  repair  the  castle  itself, 
we  should  be  yet  further  advanced  by  now.  But  there  were 
worse  horrors  to  attend  to  than  the  mere  ravages  of  time. 
All  the  land  surrounding  the  castle  had  been  mishandled  in 
the  most  appalling  fashion.  Not  only  had  it  been  so  badly 
farmed  that  it  was  little  more  than  a  wilderness  of  stinging 
nettles  and  docks,  but  some  acres  of  the  land  had  been 
turned  to  hideous  uses.  Immediately  in  front  of  the  prin- 
cipal fagade,  machinery  for  crushing  stone  and  turning  it 
into  tar  pavement  had  been  erected.  The  ground  was 
saturated  with  tar,  loaded  deep  with  barren  stone-dust,  and 
piled  high  with  huge  heaps  of  tarred  chips  ready  for 
transport  by  barge  or  cart  to  distant  places.  Another 
portion  of  the  river  front  was  a  large  manure  wharf.  Close 
by  were  a  row  of  ugly  modern  oast-houses,  recently  rebuilt 
after  what  ought  to  have  been  a  merciful  fire.  Moreover,  a 
crooked  right-of-way  led  close  in  front  of  the  gate-house,  and 
destroyed  all  possibility  of  privacy.  These  various  dis- 
figurements had  to  be  removed  one  by  one.  A  new,  shorter, 
and  better  road  was  made,  far  out  of  sight,  which  the  public 
authority  accepted  in  lieu  of  the  previous  muddy  and 
berutted  track.  The  tar-paving  business  was  moved  away, 
and  another  site  purchased  for  it  out  of  view  down  the  river. 
The  tar-stained  ground  was  covered  with  a  thick  layer  of 
good  soil,  on  which  grass  presently  consented  to  grow.  The 
oast-houses  were  pulled  down,  and  the  stone  of  which  they 
were  composed  given  back  to  the  castle  from  which  it  had 
been  robbed.  Acres  of  nettles  were  trenched  and  cleaned. 
The  deep  railway  cutting,  down  which  the  tram-line  ran 
that  fed  the  stone-crusher  from  the  quarry,  was  filled  in  with 


144         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 


about  50,000  cubic  yards  of  quarry  refuse  and  soil.  A  new 
drive  was  contrived,  and  the  whole  area  was  fenced  in ;  the 
wooded,  now  long-abandoned,  quarry,  from  which,  as 
tradition  states,  the  stone  was  fetched  that  built  the  Tower 
of  London,  was  brought  again  into  service,  and  by  means 
of  paths  and  other  careful  attention  was  rendered  a  delight- 
ful adjunct  to  all  the  rest. 

In  discussing  any  old  picture,  sculpture,  or  other  the 
like  work  of  ancient  art,  it  is  always  necessary  to  consider 
what  has  been  done  to  it  in  the  nature  of  restoration.  A 
castle  is  merely  another  kind  of  work  of  art,  as  delightful 
to  collect,  to  study,  to  repair,  to  live  with  as  is  a  fine  picture. 
If  I  were  rich  I  should  be  greatly  tempted  to  collect  several 
castles.  I  know  of  a  dozen  or  more  that  could  be  repaired 
and  made  into  glorious  modern  homes,  comfortable,  con- 
venient, and  in  some  cases  far  more  "  livable  "  than  most 
modern  houses.  To  begin  with,  a  castle,  properly  repaired, 
is  silent.  It  is  the  most  reposeful  kind  of  a  dwelling.  Next, 
it  is  draughtless,  if  the  windows  are  made  to  fit.  The  walls 
being  always  of  very  considerable  thickness,  it  follows  that, 
properly  supplied  with  a  scientific  system  of  heating,  it  can 
be  maintained  at  an  even  temperature.  Once  the  walls 
have  been  thoroughly  warmed  in  summer,  it  is  easy  to  keep 
them  at  an  even,  mild  temperature  all  through  our  coldest 
winters.  At  Allington  it  is  impossible  to  guess  what  is 
happening  to  the  weather  without  in  the  matter  of  tempera- 
ture, unless  one  goes  out  to  feel.  I  have  noticed  that  this 
uniformity  of  warmth — a  steadily  maintained  temperature 
of  about  63  degrees — strikes  visitors  with  surprise  ;  whereas 
it  is  just  about  what  ought  to  be  expected,  provided  the 
work  of  repair  and  refitting  is  properly  done.  Finally,  by 
a  due  employment  of  asphalt  and  concrete,  a  castle  interior 


DOOMED  RUINS 


145 


can  be  made  and  maintained  absolutely  dry.  The  ground 
flooring  is  of  concrete,  on  which  is  laid  a  layer  of  asphalt 
carried  also  about  three  feet  up  the  walls  in  the  form  of  a 
dado.  The  oak  flooring  is  laid  on  the  asphalt,  and  closely 
united  to  it  with  pitch.  The  other  floors  and  roof  are  of 
reinforced  concrete,  and  the  roof  is  covered  with  asphalt. 
Being  flat,  and  surrounded  by  the  battlements,  it  makes  the 
most  perfect  promenade  imaginable. 

I  mention  these  rudimentary  facts  on  purpose,  because  I 
have  found  them  novel  to  most  of  the  people  who  have 
come  to  see  my  work.  It  has  been  my  hope  that  what  has 
been,  and  is  being  done  at  Allington,  might  suggest  to  other 
people  a  like  operation  of  conservation,  repair,  and  conse- 
quent rehabitation  of  other  ancient  castles  now  in  ruins. 
A  ruin  is  a  building  in  rapid  process  of  decay.  No  ruin  will 
last  for  any  considerable  number  of  centuries.  You  have 
only  to  look  at  Buck's  views  of  Old  English  buildings  in 
the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  compare  them 
with  existing  remains  to  realise  how  much  has  vanished 
in  a  little  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Only  a 
building  that  is  being  used  is  likely  to  last.  Restoration  of 
a  castle,  in  the  sense  of  reconstructing  it  as  an  ancient 
fortress  (after  the  fashion  of  Pierrefonds),  is  anachronic. 
The  reparation  of  an  old  building,  and  the  alteration  and 
extension  of  it  to  adapt  it  to  modern  needs — as  Sir  Henry 
Wyatt  in  Tudor  days  repaired  Allington — is  legitimate  and 
praiseworthy.  Every  existing  old  feature  that  can  be 
retained  or  recovered  should  be.  The  addition  of  anything 
else  is  permissible,  provided  that  what  is  added  is  for  use 
or  beauty,  and  is  actually  useful  or  beautiful.  Success  is 
attained  where  the  work  of  the  past  is  scrupulously  con- 
served, and  a  beautiful  and  useful  result  ensues.    Such  are 


146         HOW  WE  FOUND  A  CASTLE 


the  principles  which  we  have  endeavoured  to  follow  in  our 
work  at  Allington.  The  result  is  successful  as  far  as  the 
work  has  gone. 

I  have  only  one  more  matter  to  mention  before  bringing 
these  discursive  chapters  to  an  end.  We  intended  Allington 
Castle  to  be  made  a  kind  of  casket  to  contain  such  works 
of  art  as  we  had  acquired,  or  might  in  future  acquire.  Into 
its  repaired  walls  we  worked,  as  opportunity  offered,  the 
various  sculptures  we  had  acquired  at  different  times  and  in 
widely  sundered  localities.  We  found  places  in  the  windows 
for  our  fragments  of  stained  glass,  on  the  walls  for  our 
hangings,  and  in  the  various  chambers  for  our  old  oak  and 
other  furniture  of  all  dates.  But,  alas!  we  were  doomed 
to  one  great  disappointment ;  in  no  room  that  we  have 
yet  made,  or,  in  the  small  part  of  the  ruin  that  remains  to 
be  repaired,  can  make,  is  there  a  single  wall  on  which 
pictures  can  be  effectively  hung.  The  necessary  form  and 
position  of  the  windows  casting  a  low  horizontal  light  makes 
it  impossible  to  illuminate  pictures  properly,  or  to  avoid 
reflections.  Moreover,  most  of  the  rooms  have  of  necessity 
windows  in  both  their  opposing  long  walls,  for  all  the  rooms 
are  relatively  long  in  comparison  with  their  width,  which 
is  that  of  a  medium  length  oak  beam — about  thirteen  feet 
clear  from  wall  to  wall.  Hence  there  are  always  cross 
lights.  To  see  a  particular  painting  one  must  stand  on  a 
special  spot,  and  generally  look  at  it  obliquely,  and  then  the 
light  is  bad.  That  is  the  ounce  of  bitter  in  our  pound  of 
sweet,  and  it  is  a  bitter  that  unfortunately  cannot  be 
neutralised. 

I  will  not,  however,  take  leave  of  my  readers  on  a  note 
of  regret.  As  I  look  back  on  thirty  years  of  what  I  may 
call  sporadic  collecting,  because  collecting  has  been  only 


THE  JOYS  OF  COLLECTING  147 


the  byplay  of  an  otherwise  rather  full  and  busy  life,  I  can 
truly  say  that  it  has  been  to  me,  and  to  those  dear  to  me, 
who  have  shared  its  excitements,  its  disappointments,  and 
its  occasional  successes,  a  great  joy  and  an  abiding  interest. 
It  has  enabled  us  to  take  our  share  at  times  in  rescuing 
from  imminent  destruction,  and  often  in  preserving  some 
noble  art  treasures  of  the  past.  It  has  filled  our  recreations 
with  interest ;  it  has  occupied  us  in  a  manner  which  has 
been  at  all  events  harmless  to  others,  and  not  injurious  to 
ourselves.  We  have  enjoyed  the  passion  of  the  hunt 
without  killing,  and  our  trophies  are  not  consumed. 


Printed  by 
Hazell,  Watson  &>  Vinby,  Ld., 
London  and  Aylesbury.— 1412484. 


6  33^ 


&5  CONWAY  (Sir  Martin).  The  Sport  of 
tollecting.  With  26  illustrations.  Cloth. 
London,  (1914).*  .  $3.00 


GETTY  RESEARCH  INSTITUTE 


3  3125  01152  6601 


